NOT a day passed in which Maltravers was absent from the side of Florence. He came early, he went late. He subsided into his former character of an accepted suitor, without a word of explanation with Lord Saxingham. That task was left to Florence. She doubtless performed it well, for his lordship seemed satisfied though grave, and, almost for the first time in his life, sad. Maltravers never reverted to the cause of their unhappy dissension. Nor from that night did he once give way to whatever might be his more agonised and fierce emotions--he never affected to reproach himself--he never bewailed with a vain despair their approaching separation. Whatever it cost him, he stood collected and stoical in the intense power of his self control. He had but one object, one desire, one hope--to save the last hours of Florence Lascelles from every pang--to brighten and smooth the passage across the Solemn Bridge. His forethought, his presence of mind, his care, his tenderness, never forsook him for an instant: they went beyond the attributes of men, they went into all the fine, the indescribable minutiae by which woman makes herself, “in pain and anguish,” the “ministering angel.” It was as if he had nerved and braced his whole nature to one duty--as if that duty were more felt than affection itself--as if he were resolved that Florence should not remember that _she had no mother_! And, oh, then, how Florence loved him! how far more luxurious, in its grateful and clinging fondness, was that love, than the wild and jealous fire of their earlier connection! Her own character, as is often the case in lingering illness, became incalculably more gentle and softened down, as the shadows closed around it. She loved to make him read and talk to her--and her ancient poetry of thought now grew mellowed, as it were, into religion, which is indeed poetry with a stronger wing.... There was a world beyond the grave--there was life out of the chrysalis sleep of death--they would yet be united. And Maltravers, who was a solemn and intense believer in the GREAT HOPE, did not neglect the purest and highest of all the fountains of solace. Often in that quiet room, in that gorgeous mansion, which had been the scene of all vain or worldly schemes--of flirtations and feastings, and political meetings and cabinet dinners, and all the bubbles of the passing wave--often there did these persons, whose position to each other had been so suddenly and so strangely changed--converse on those matters--daring and divine--which “make the bridal of the earth and sky.”