exhorted him, if he loved her, to confess, and if not, to fly. She had
written artfully and eloquently--she was desirous of expediting her own
fate; and then, with that letter in her bosom, she had met Maltravers,
and the reader has learned the rest. Something of all this the blushing
and happy Florence now revealed: and when she ended with uttering the
woman's soft fear that she had been too bold, is it wonderful that
Maltravers, clasping her to his bosom, felt the gratitude, and the
delighted vanity, which seemed even to himself like love? And into love
those feelings rapidly and deliciously will merge, if fate and accident
permit!

And now they were by the side of the water; and the sun was gently
setting as on the eve before. It was about the same hour, the fairest
of an autumn day; none were near--the slope of the hill hid the house
from their view. Had they been in the desert they could not have been
more alone. It was not silence that breathed around them, as they sat
on that bench with the broad beech spreading over them its trembling
canopy of leaves;--but those murmurs of living nature which are sweeter
than silence itself--the songs of birds--the tinkling bell of the sheep
on the opposite bank--the wind sighing through the trees, and the gentle
heaving of the glittering waves that washed the odorous reed and
water-lily at their feet. They had both been for some moments silent;
and Florence now broke the pause, but in tones more low than usual.

"Ah!" said she, turning towards him, "these hours are happier than we
can find in that crowded world whither your destiny must call us. For
me, ambition seems for ever at an end. I have found all; I am no longer
haunted with the desire of gaining a vague something,--a shadowy empire,
that we call fame or power. The sole thought that disturbs the calm
current of my soul, is the fear to lose a particle of the rich