"And you, Mr. Maltravers," turning quickly round--"you--have you friends? Do you feel that there are, I do not say public, but private affections and duties, for which life is made less a possession than a trust?" "Lady Florence--no!--I have friends, it is true, and Cleveland is of the nearest; but the life within life--the second self, in whom we vest the right and mastery over our own being--I know it not. But is it," he added, after a pause, "a rare privation? Perhaps it is a happy one. I have learned to lean on my own soul, and not look elsewhere for the reeds that a wind can break." "Ah, it is a cold philosophy--you may reconcile yourself to its wisdom in the world, in the hum and shock of men; but in solitude, with Nature--ah, no! While the mind alone is occupied, you may be contented with the pride of stoicism; but there are moments when the /heart/ wakens as from a sleep--wakens like a frightened child--to feel itself alone and in the dark." Ernest was silent, and Florence continued, in an altered voice: "This is a strange conversation--and you must think me indeed a wild, romance-reading person, as the world is apt to call me. But if I live--I--pshaw!--life denies ambition to women." "If a woman like you, Lady Florence, should ever love, it will be one in whose career you may perhaps find that noblest of all ambitions--the ambition women only feel--the ambition for another!" "Ah! but I shall never love," said Lady Florence, and her cheek grew pale as the starlight shone on it; "still, perhaps," she added quickly, "I may at least know the blessing of friendship. Why now," and here, approaching Maltravers, she laid her hand with a winning frankness on his arm--" why now, should not we be to each other as if love, as you call it, were not a thing for earth--and friendship supplied its place?--there is no danger of our falling in love with each other! You are not vain enough to expect it in me, and I, you know, am a coquette; let us be friends, confidants--at least till you marry, or I give another the right to control my friendships and monopolise my secrets." Maltravers was startled--the sentiment Florence addressed to him, he, in words not dissimilar, had once addressed to Valerie. "The world," said he, kissing the hand that yet lay on his arm, "the world will--" "Oh, you men!--the world, the world!--Everything gentle, everything pure, everything noble, high-wrought and holy--is to be squared, and cribbed, and maimed to the rule and measure of the world! The world--are you, too, its slave? Do you not despise its hollow cant--its methodical hypocrisy?"