During dinner, the conversation between Maltravers and Madame de Ventadour was vague and embarrassed. Ernest was no longer in love with her--he had outgrown that youthful fancy. She had exercised influence over him--the new influences that he had created had chased away her image. Such is life. Long absences extinguish all the false lights, though not the true ones. The lamps are dead in the banquet-room of yesterday; but a thousand years hence, and the stars we look on to-night will burn as brightly. Maltravers was no longer in love with Valerie. But Valerie--ah, perhaps /hers/ had been true love! Maltravers was surprised when he came to examine the state of his own feelings--he was surprised to find that his pulse did not beat quicker at the touch of one whose very glance had once thrilled him to the soul--he was surprised, but rejoiced. He was no longer anxious to seek, but to shun excitement, and he was a better and a higher being than he had been on the shores of Naples. CHAPTER IX. "Whence that low voice, a whisper from the heart, That told of days long past?"--WORDSWORTH. ERNEST stayed several days at Lord Doningdale's, and every day he rode out with Valerie, but it was with a large party; and every evening he conversed with her, but the whole world might have overheard what they said. In fact, the sympathy that had once existed between the young dreamer and the proud, discontented woman had in much passed away. Awakened to vast and grand objects, Maltravers was a dreamer no more. Inured to the life of trifles she had once loathed, Valerie had settled down into the usages and thoughts of the common world--she had no longer the superiority of earthly wisdom over Maltravers, and his romance was sobered in its eloquence, and her ear dulled to its tone. Still Ernest felt a deep interest in her, and still she seemed to feel a sensitive pride in his career. One evening Maltravers had joined a circle in which Madame de Ventadour, with more than her usual animation, presided--and to which, in her pretty, womanly, and thoroughly French way, she was lightly laying down the law on a hundred subjects--Philosophy, Poetry, Sevres china, and the balance of power in Europe. Ernest listened to her, delighted, but not enchanted. Yet Valerie was not natural that night--she was speaking from forced spirits. "Well," said Madame de Ventadour at last, tired, perhaps of the part she had been playing, and bringing to a sudden close an animated description of the then French court--"well, see now if we ought not to be ashamed of ourselves--our talk has positively interrupted the music. Did you see Lord Doningdale stop it with a bow to me, as much as to say, with his courtly reproof, 'It shall not disturb you, madam'? I will no longer be accessory to your crime of bad taste!"