"She dies and I cannot see her! and you are permitted that last glimpse
of human perfectness; you who never loved her as I did; you--hated and
detested! you--"

Cesarini paused, and his voice died away, choked in his own convulsive
gaspings for breath.

Maltravers looked at him from the height of his erect and lofty form,
with a merciless eye; for in this one quarter, Maltravers had shut out
pity from his soul.

"Weak criminal!" said he, "hear me. You received at my hands
forbearance, friendship, fostering and anxious care. When your own
follies plunged you into penury, mine was the unseen hand that plucked
you from famine, or the prison. I strove to redeem, and save, and raise
you, and endow your miserable spirit with the thirst and the power of
honour and independence. The agent of that wish was Florence Lascelles;
you repaid us well! a base and fraudulent forgery, attaching meanness to
me, fraught with agony and death to her. Your conscience at last smote
you; you revealed to her your crime--one spark of manhood made you
reveal it also to myself. Fresh as I was in that moment from the
contemplations of the ruin you had made, I curbed the impulse that would
have crushed the life from your bosom. I told you to live on while life
was left to her. If she recovered, I could forgive; if she died, I must
avenge. We entered into that solemn compact, and in a few hours the
bond will need the seal: it is the blood of one of us. Castruccio
Cesarini, there is justice in Heaven. Deceive yourself not; you will
fall by my hand. When the hour comes, you will hear from me. Let me
pass--I have no more now to say."