understand her. He went away at last, and thought seriously of Florence
as a wife. Not a wife for companionship, for friendship, for love; but
a wife who could take the trouble of rank off his hands--do him honour,
and raise him an heir, whom he might flatter himself would be his own.

From his corner also, with dreams yet more vain and daring, Castruccio
Cesarini cast his eyes upon the queen-like brow of the great heiress.
Oh, yes, she had a soul--she could disdain rank and revere genius! What
a triumph over De Montaigne--Maltravers--all the world, if he, the
neglected poet, could win the hand for which the magnates of the earth
sighed in vain! Pure and lofty as he thought himself, it was her birth
and her wealth which Cesarini adored in Florence. And Lumley, nearer
perhaps to the prize than either--yet still far off--went on conversing,
with eloquent lips and sparkling eyes, while his cold heart was planning
every word, dictating every glance, and laying out (for the most worldly
are often the most visionary) the chart for a royal road to fortune.
And Florence Lascelles, when the crowd had dispersed and she sought her
chamber, forgot all three; and with that morbid romance often peculiar
to those for whom Fate smiles the most, mused over the ideal image of
the one she /could/ love--"in maiden meditation /not/ fancy-free!"



CHAPTER IV.

"In mea vesanas habui dispendia vires,
Et valui poenas fortis in ipse meas."*--OVID.

* I had the strength of a madman to my own cost, and employed that
strength in my own punishment.