petition for an early marriage was poured into her ear? This was in July,
and it would never do that he should be left, unmarried, to the rigour of
another winter. She looked into his face and knew that she had cause for
fear. Oh, heavens! if all these golden hopes should fall to the ground,
and she should come to be known only as the girl who had been engaged to
the late Sir Florian! But he himself pressed the marriage on the same
ground. "They tell me," he said, "that I had better get a little south by
the beginning of October. I won't go alone. You know what I mean--eh,
Lizzie?" Of course she married him in September.

They spent a honeymoon of six weeks at a place he had in Scotland, and the
first blow came upon him as they passed through London, back from
Scotland, on their way to Italy. Messrs. Harter & Benjamin sent in their
little bill, which amounted to something over £400, and other little bills
were sent in. Sir Florian was a man by whom all such bills would certainly
be paid, but by whom they would not be paid without his understanding much
and conceiving more as to their cause and nature. How much he really did
understand she was never quite aware; but she did know that he detected
her in a positive falsehood. She might certainly have managed the matter
better than she did; and had she admitted everything there might probably
have been but few words about it. She did not, however, understand the
nature of the note she had signed, and thought that simply new bills would
be presented by the jewellers to her husband. She gave a false account of
the transaction, and the lie was detected. I do not know that she cared
very much. As she was utterly devoid of true tenderness, so also was she
devoid of conscience. They went abroad, however; and by the time the
winter was half over in Naples, he knew what his wife was; and before the
end of the spring he was dead.

She had so far played her game well, and had won her stakes. What regrets,