Ernest Maltravers Book IX by Edward Bulwer-lytton

"Oh, stop this headlong current of your goodness; It comes too fast upon a feeble soul. " DRYDEN: /Sebastian and Doras/.

THE smooth physician had paid his evening visit; Lord Saxingham had gone to a cabinet dinner, for Life must ever walk side by side with Death: and Lady Florence Lascelles was alone. It was a room adjoining her sleeping-apartment -- a room in which, in the palmy days of the brilliant and wayward heiress, she had loved to display her fanciful and peculiar taste. There had she been accustomed to muse, to write, to study -- there had she first been dazzled by the novel glow of Ernest's undiurnal and stately thoughts -- there had she first conceived the romance of girlhood, which had led her to confer with him, unknown -- there had she first confessed to herself that fancy had begotten love -- there had she gone through love's short and exhausting process of lone emotion; -- the doubt, the hope, the ecstasy; the reverse, the terror; the inanimate despondency, the agonised despair! And there now, sadly and patiently, she awaited the gradual march of inevitable decay.