"Poor Castruccio! he seems leaving his lodging," thought Maltravers. "By this time I fear he will have spent the last sum I conveyed to him--I must remember to find him out and replenish his stores.--Do not forget," said he aloud, "to see Cesarini, and urge him to accept the appointment we spoke of." "I will not forget it--I will see him to-morrow before we meet. Yet it is a painful task, Ernest." "I allow it. Alas! Florence, you owe him some reparation. He undoubtedly once conceived himself entitled to form hopes the vanity of which his ignorance of our English world and his foreign birth prevented him from suspecting." "Believe me, I did not give him the right to form such expectations." "But you did not sufficiently discourage them. Ah, Florence, never underrate the pangs of hope crushed, of love contemned." "Dreadful!" said Florence, almost shuddering. "It is strange, but my conscience never so smote me before. It is since I loved that I feel, for the first time, how guilty a creature is--" "A coquette!" interrupted Maltravers. "Well, let us think of the past no more; but if we can restore a gifted man, whose youth promised much, to an honourable independence and a healthful mind, let us do so. Me, Cesarini never can forgive; he will think I have robbed him of you. But we men--the woman we have once loved, even after she rejects us, ever has some power over us, and your eloquence, which has so often roused me, cannot fail to impress a nature yet more excitable."