"You are here once more, Castruccio Cesarini; it is well!" said the low but ringing voice of Ernest Maltravers. "This, I believe, will not be our last interview to-night."

"I ask you, sir," said Cesarini, in a tone in which pride struggled with emotion--"I ask you to tell me how she is; whether you know--I cannot speak--"

"Your work is nearly done," answered Maltravers. "A few hours more, and your victim, for she is yours, will bear her tale to the Great Judgment Seat. Murderer as you are, tremble, for your own hour approaches!"

"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 pa.s.s--I have no more now to say."

Every syllable of this speech was uttered with that thrilling distinctness which seems as if the depth of the heart spoke in the voice. But Cesarini did not appear to understand its import. He seized Maltravers by the arm, and looked in his face with a wild and menacing glare.

"Did you tell me she was dying?" he said. "I ask you that question: why do you not answer me? Oh, by the way, you threaten me with your vengeance. Know you not that I long to meet you front to front, and to the death? Did I not tell you so--did I not try to move your slow blood--to insult you into a conflict in which I should have gloried? Yet then you were marble."

"Because _my_ wrong I could forgive, and _hers_--there was then a hope that hers might not need the atonement. Away!"

Maltravers shook the hold of the Italian from his arm, and pa.s.sed on. A wild, sharp yell of despair rang after him, and echoed in his ear as he strode the long, dim, solitary stairs that led to the death-bed of Florence Lascelles.

Maltravers entered the room adjoining that which contained the sufferer--the same room, still gay and cheerful, in which had been his first interview with Florence since their reconciliation.

Here he found the physician dozing in a _fauteuil_. Lady Florence had fallen asleep during the last two or three hours. Lord Saxingham was in his own apartment, deeply and noisily affected; for it was not thought that Florence could survive the night.

Maltravers sat himself quietly down. Before him, on a table, lay several ma.n.u.script books, gaily and gorgeously bound; he mechanically opened them. Florence's fair, n.o.ble Italian characters met his eye in every page. Her rich and active mind, her love for poetry, her thirst for knowledge, her indulgence of deep thought, spoke from those pages like the ghosts of herself. Often, underscored with the marks of her approbation, he chanced upon extracts from his own works, sometimes upon reflections by the writer herself, not inferior in truth and depth to his own; s.n.a.t.c.hes of wild verse never completed, but of a power and energy beyond the delicate grace of lady-poets; brief, vigorous criticisms on books, above the common holiday studies of the s.e.x; indignant and sarcastic aphorisms on the real world, with high and sad bursts of feeling upon the ideal one; all chequering and enriching the various volumes, told of the rare gifts with which this singular girl was endowed--a herbal, as it were, of withered blossoms that might have borne Hesperian fruits. And sometimes in these outpourings of the full mind and laden heart were allusions to himself, so tender and so touching--the pencilled outline of his features, traced by memory in a thousand aspects--the reference to former interviews and conversations--the dates and hours marked with a woman's minute and treasuring care!--all these tokens of genius and of love spoke to him with a voice that said, "And this creature is lost to you, forever: you never appreciated her till the time for her departure was irrevocably fixed!"

Maltravers uttered a deep groan; all the past rushed over him. Her romantic pa.s.sion for one yet unknown--her interest in his glory--her zeal for his life of life, his spotless and haughty name. It was as if with her, Fame and Ambition were dying also, and henceforth nothing but common clay and sordid motives were to be left on earth.

How sudden--how awfully sudden had been the blow! True, there had been an absence of some months in which the change had operated. But absence is a blank, a nonent.i.ty. He had left her in apparent health, in the time of prosperity and pride. He saw her again--stricken down in body and temper--chastened--humbled--dying. And this being, so bright and lofty, how had she loved him! Never had he been so loved, except in that morning dream, haunted by the vision of the lost and dim-remembered Alice. Never on earth could he be so loved again. The air and aspect of the whole chamber grew to him painful and oppressive. It was full of her--the owner! There the harp, which so well became her muse-like form that it was a.s.sociated with her like a part of herself! There the pictures, fresh and glowing from her hand,-the grace--the harmony--the cla.s.sic and simple taste everywhere displayed.

Rousseau has left to us an immortal portrait of the lover waiting for the first embraces of his mistress. But to wait with a pulse as feverish, a brain as dizzy, for her last look--to await the moment of despair, not rapture--to feel the slow and dull time as palpable a load upon the heart, yet to shrink from your own impatience, and wish that the agony of suspense might endure for ever--this, oh, this is a picture of intense pa.s.sion--of flesh and blood reality--of the rare and solemn epochs of our mysterious life--which had been worthier the genius of that "Apostle of Affliction"!

At length the door opened; the favourite attendant of Florence looked in.

"Is Mr. Maltravers there? Oh, sir, my lady is awake and would see you."

Maltravers rose, but his feet were glued to the ground, his sinking heart stood still--it was a mortal terror that possessed him. With a deep sigh he shook off the numbing spell, and pa.s.sed to the bedside of Florence.

She sat up, propped by pillows, and as he sank beside her, and clasped her wan, transparent hand, she looked at him with a smile of pitying love.

"You have been very, very kind to me," she said, after a pause, and with a voice which had altered even since the last time he heard it. "You have made that part of life from which human nature shrinks with dread, the happiest and the brightest of all my short and vain existence. My own clear Ernest--Heaven reward you!"

A few grateful tears dropped from her eyes, and they fell on the hand which she bent her lips to kiss.

"It was not here--nor amidst the streets and the noisy abodes of anxious, worldly men--nor was it in this harsh and dreary season of the year, that I could have wished to look my last on earth. Could I have seen the face of Nature--could I have watched once more with the summer sun amidst those gentle scenes we loved so well, Death would have had no difference from sleep. But what matters it? With you there are summer and Nature everywhere!"

Maltravers raised his face, and their eyes met in silence--it was a long, fixed gaze, which spoke more than all words could. Her head dropped on his shoulder, and there it lay, pa.s.sive and motionless, for some moments. A soft step glided into the room--it was the unhappy father's. He came to the other side of his daughter, and sobbed convulsively.

She then raised herself, and even in the shades of death, a faint blush pa.s.sed over her cheek.

"My good dear father, what comfort will it give you hereafter to think how fondly you spoiled your Florence!"

Lord Saxingham could not answer: he clasped her in his arms and wept over her. Then he broke away--looked on her with a shudder--

"O G.o.d!" he cried, "she is dead--she is dead!"

Maltravers started. The physician kindly approached, and, taking Lord Saxingham's hand, led him from the room--he went mute and obedient like a child.

But the struggle was not yet past. Florence once more opened her eyes, and Maltravers uttered a cry of joy. But along those eyes the film was darkening rapidly, as still through the mist and shadow they sought the beloved countenance which hung over her, as if to breathe life into waning life. Twice her lips moved, but her voice failed her; she shook her head sadly.

Maltravers hastily held to her mouth a cordial which lay ready on the table near her, but scarce had it moistened her lips, when her whole frame grew heavier and heavier, in his clasp. Her head once more sank upon his bosom--she thrice gasped wildly for breath--and at length, raising her hand on high, life struggled into its expiring ray.

"_There_--above!--Ernest--that name--Ernest!"

Yes, that name was the last she uttered; she was evidently conscious of that thought, for a smile, as her voice again faltered--a smile sweet and serene--that smile never seen but on the faces of the dying and the dead--borrowed from a light that is not of this world--settled slowly on her brow, her lips, her whole countenance; still she breathed, but the breath grew fainter! at length, without murmur, sound, or struggle, it pa.s.sed away--the head dropped from his bosom--the form fell from his arms-all was over!

CHAPTER VIII.

* * * * "Is this the promised end?"--_Lear_.

IT was two hours after that scene before Maltravers left the house. It was then just on the stroke of the first hour of morning. To him, while he walked through the streets, and the sharp winds howled on his path, it was as if a strange and wizard life had pa.s.sed into and supported him--a sort of drowsy, dull existence. He was like a sleepwalker, unconscious of all around him; yet his steps went safe and free; and the one thought that possessed his being--into which all intellect seemed shrunk--the thought, not fiery nor vehement, but calm, stern, and solemn--the thought of revenge--seemed, as it were, grown his soul itself. He arrived at the door of Colonel Danvers, mounted the stairs, and as his friend advanced to meet him, said calmly, "Now, then, the hour has arrived."

"But what would you do now?"

"Come with me, and you shall learn."

"Very well, my carriage is below. Will you direct the servants?"

Maltravers nodded, gave his orders to the careless footman, and the two friends were soon driving through the less known and courtly regions of the giant city. It was then that Maltravers concisely stated to Danvers the fraud that had been practised by Cesarini.

"You will go with me now," concluded Maltravers, "to his house. To do him justice, he is no coward; he has not shrunk from giving me his address, nor will he shrink from the atonement I demand. I shall wait below while you arrange our meeting--at daybreak for to-morrow." Danvers was astonished and even appalled by the discovery made to him. There was something so unusual and strange in the whole affair. But neither his experience, nor his principles of honour, could suggest any alternative to the plan proposed. For though not regarding the cause of quarrel in the same light as Maltravers, and putting aside all question as to the right of the latter to const.i.tute himself the champion of the betrothed, or the avenger of the dead, it seemed clear to the soldier that a man whose confidential letter had been garbled by another for the purpose of slandering his truth and calumniating his name, had no option but contempt, or the sole retribution (wretched though it be) which the customs of the higher cla.s.s permit to those who live within its pale.

But contempt for a wrong that a sorrow so tragic had followed--was _that_ option in human philosophy?

The carriage stopped at a door in a narrow lane in an obscure suburb.

Yet, dark as all the houses around were, lights were seen in the upper windows of Cesarini's residence, pa.s.sing to and fro; and scarce had the servant's loud knock echoed through the dim thoroughfare, ere the door was opened. Danvers descended, and entered the pa.s.sage--"Oh, sir, I am so glad you are come!" said an old woman, pale and trembling; "he do take on so!"

"There is no mistake," asked Danvers, halting; "an Italian gentleman named Cesarini lodges here?"

"Yes, sir, poor cretur--I sent for you to come to him--for says I to my boy, says I--"

"Whom do you take me for?"

"Why, la, sir, you be's the doctor, ben't you?"

Danvers made no reply; he had a mean opinion of the courage of one who could act dishonourably; he thought there was some design to cheat his friend out of his revenge; accordingly he ascended the stairs, motioning the woman to precede him.