which they had not before invested her.

"Oh," he said, as, with a sudden impulse, he lifted her hand to his
lips, "blessed be the hour in which you gave me your friendship! These
are the thoughts I have longed to hear from living lips, when I have
been tempted to believe patriotism a delusion, and virtue but a name."

Lady Florence heard, and her whole form seemed changed,--she was no
longer the majestic sibyl, but the attached, timorous, delighted woman.

It so happened that in her confusion she dropped from her hand the
flower Maltravers had given her, and involuntarily glad of a pretext to
conceal her countenance, she stooped to take it from the ground. In so
doing, a letter fell from her bosom--and Maltravers, as he bent forwards
to forestall her own movement, saw that the direction was to himself,
and in the handwriting of his unknown correspondent. He seized the
letter, and gazed in flattered and entranced astonishment, first on the
writing, next on the detected writer. Florence grew deadly pale, and
covering her face with her hands, burst into tears.

"O fool that I was," cried Ernest, in the passion of the moment, "not to
know--not to have felt that there were not two Florences in the world!
But if the thought had crossed me, I would not have dared to harbour
it."

"Go, go," sobbed Florence; "leave me, in mercy leave me!"

"Not till you bid me rise," said Ernest, in emotion scarcely less deep
than hers, as he sank on his knee at her feet.