"My poor uncle!" said Lumley, eagerly changing the conversation--"the shock was sudden; and melancholy duties have absorbed me so till this day, that I could not come even to you. It soothed me, however, to learn, in answer to my daily inquiries, that Ernest was here. For my part," he added with a faint smile, "I have had duties as well as honours devolved on me. I am left guardian to an heiress, and betrothed to a child." "How do you mean?" "Why, my poor uncle was so fondly attached to his wife's daughter, that he has left her the bulk of his property: a very small estate--not L2000 a year--goes with the title (a new title, too, which requires twice as much to carry it off and make its pinchbeck pass for gold). In order, however, to serve a double purpose, secure to his /protegee/ his own beloved peerage, and atone to his nephew for the loss of wealth--he has left it a last request, that I should marry the young lady over whom I am appointed guardian, when she is eighteen--alas! I shall then be at the other side of forty! If she does not take to so mature a bridegroom, she loses thirty--only thirty of the L200,000 settled upon her, which goes to me as a sugar-plum after the nauseous draught of the young lady's 'No.' Now, you know all. His widow, really an exemplary young woman, has a jointure of L1500 a year, and the villa. It is not much, but she is contented." The lightness of the new peer's tone revolted Maltravers, and he turned impatiently away. But Lord Vargrave, resolving not to suffer the conversation to glide back to sorrowful subjects, which he always hated, turned round to Ernest, and said, "Well, my dear Ernest, I see by the papers that you are to have N------'s late appointment--it is a very rising office. I congratulate you." "I have refused," said Maltravers, drily. "Bless me!--indeed!--why?" Ernest bit his lip, and frowned; but his glance wandering unconsciously at Florence, Lumley thought he detected the true reply to his question, and became mute. The conversation was afterwards embarrassed and broken up; Lumley went away as soon as he could, and Lady Florence that night had a severe fit, and could not leave her bed the next day. That confinement she had struggled against to the last; and now, day by day, it grew more frequent and inevitable. The steps of Death became accelerated. And Lord Saxingham, wakened at last to the mournful truth, took his place by his daughter's side, and forgot that he was a cabinet minister. CHAPTER VII. "Away, my friends, why take such pains to know What some brave marble soon in church shall show?" CRABBE.