future son-in-law-he even hinted nothing of the compromise as to time
which he had made with his daughter. He thought it better to leave it
to Lady Florence to arrange that matter. They shook hands frigidly and
parted. Maltravers went next into Cleveland's room, and communicated
all to the delighted old man, whose congratulations were so fervid that
Maltravers felt it would be a sin not to fancy himself the happiest, man
in the world. That night he wrote his refusal of the appointment
offered him.

The next day, Lord Saxingham went to his office in Downing Street as
usual, and Lady Florence and Ernest found an opportunity to ramble
through the grounds alone.

There it was that occurred those confessions, sweet alike to utter and
to hear. Then did Florence speak of her early years--of her self-formed
and solitary mind--of her youthful dreams and reveries. Nothing around
her to excite interest or admiration, or the more romantic, the higher,
or the softer qualities of her nature, she turned to contemplation and
to books. It is the combination of the faculties with the affections,
exiled from action, and finding no worldly vent, which produces Poetry,
the child of passion and of thought. Hence, before the real cares of
existence claim them, the young, who are abler yet lonelier than their
fellows, are nearly always poets; and Florence was a poetess. In minds
like this, the first book that seems to embody and represent their own
most cherished and beloved trains of sentiment and ideas, ever creates a
reverential and deep enthusiasm. The lonely, and proud, and melancholy
soul of Maltravers, which made itself visible in all his creations,
became to Florence like a revealer of the secrets of her own nature.
She conceived an intense and mysterious interest in the man whose mind
exercised so pervading a power over her own. She made herself