Ernest Maltravers — Volume 08 by Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron, 1803-1873

"MY DEAR CESARINI:

"The assurance of your friendly feelings is most welcome to me. In much of what you say of marriage, I am inclined, though with reluctance, to agree. As to Lady Florence herself, few persons are more calculated to dazzle, perhaps to fascinate. But is she a person to make a home happy--to sympathise where she has been accustomed to command--to comprehend, and to yield to the waywardness and irritability common to our fanciful and morbid race--to content herself with the homage of a single heart? I do not know her enough to decide the question; but I know her enough to feel deep solicitude and anxiety for your happiness, if centred in a nature so imperious and so vain. But you will remind me of her fortune, her station. You will say that such are the sources from which, to an ambitious mind, happiness may well be drawn! Alas! I fear that the man who marries Lady Florence must indeed confine his dreams of felicity to those harsh and disappointing realities. But, Cesarini, these are not words which, were we more intimate, I would address to you. I doubt the reality of those affections which you ascribe to her and suppose devoted to yourself. She is evidently fond of conquest. She sports with the victims she makes. Her vanity dupes others, perhaps to be duped itself at last. I will not say more to you.

"Hurrah!" cried Ferrers, as he threw down the letter, and rubbed his hands with delight. "I little thought, when I schemed for this letter, that chance would make it so inestimably serviceable. There is less to alter than I thought for--the clumsiest botcher in the world could manage it. Let me look again. Hem, hem--the first phrase to alter is this: 'I know her enough to feel deep solicitude and anxiety for /your/ happiness if centred in a nature so imperious and vain'--scratch out 'your,' and put 'my.' All the rest good, good--till we come to 'affections which you ascribe to her, and suppose devoted to /yourself/'--for '/yourself/' write '/myself/'--the rest will do. Now, then, the date--we must change it to the present month, and the work is done. I wish that Italian blockhead would come. If I can but once make an irreparable breach between her and Maltravers, I think I cannot fail of securing his place; her pique, her resentment, will hurry her into taking the first who offers, by way of revenge. And by Jupiter, even if I fail (which I am sure I shall not), it will be something to keep Flory as lady paramount for a duke of our own party. I shall gain immensely by such a connection; but I lose everything and gain nothing by her marrying Maltravers--of opposite politics too--whom I begin to hate like poison. But no duke shall have her--Florence Ferrers, the only alliteration I ever liked--yet it would sound rough in poetry."