"I may at least know the blessing of friendship. Why now," and here,
approaching Maltravers, she laid her hand with a winning frankness on
his arm--" why now, should not we be to each other as if love, as you
call it, were not a thing for earth--and friendship supplied its
place?--there is no danger of our falling in love with each other! You
are not vain enough to expect it in me, and I, you know, am a coquette;
let us be friends, confidants--at least till you marry, or I give
another the right to control my friendships and monopolise my secrets."

Maltravers was startled--the sentiment Florence addressed to him, he, in
words not dissimilar, had once addressed to Valerie.

"The world," said he, kissing the hand that yet lay on his arm, "the
world will--"

"Oh, you men!--the world, the world!--Everything gentle, everything
pure, everything noble, high-wrought and holy--is to be squared, and
cribbed, and maimed to the rule and measure of the world! The
world--are you, too, its slave? Do you not despise its hollow cant--its
methodical hypocrisy?"

"Heartily!" said Ernest Maltravers, almost with fierceness. "No man ever
so scorned its false gods and its miserable creeds--its war upon the
weak--its fawning upon the great--its ingratitude to benefactors--its
sordid league with mediocrity against excellence. Yes, in proportion as
I love mankind, I despise and detest that worse than Venetian oligarchy
which mankind set over them and call 'THE WORLD.'"

And then it was, warmed by the excitement of released feelings,
long and carefully shrouded, that this man, ordinarily so calm and