ay, a hundredfold, in their fascination, would not have availed him with
the pure but disappointed Constance, even had a sense of right and wrong
very different from the standard he now acknowledged permitted him to
exert them. So that his was rather the sacrifice of impulse, than of any
triumph that impulse could afterwards have gained him.

Many, and soft and sweet were now the recollections of Constance. Her
heart flew back to her early love among the shades of Wendover; to the
first confession of the fair enthusiastic boy, when he offered at her
shrine a mind, a genius, a heart capable of fruits which the indolence of
after-life, and the lethargy of disappointed hope, had blighted before
their time.

If he was now so deaf to what she considered the nobler, because more
stirring, excitements of life, was she not in some measure answerable for
the supineness? Had there not been a day in which he had vowed to toil,
to labour, to sacrifice the very character of his mind, for a union with
her? Was she, after all, was she right to adhere so rigidly to her
father's dying words, and to that vow afterwards confirmed by her own
pride and bitterness of soul? She looked to her father's portrait for an
answer; and that daring and eloquent face seemed, for the first time, cold
and unanswering to her appeal.

In such meditations the hours passed, and midnight came on without
Constance having quitted her apartment. She now summoned her woman, and
inquired if Godolphin was at home. He had come in about an hour since,
and, complaining of fatigue, had retired to rest. Constance again
dismissed her maid, and stole to his apartment. He was already asleep,
his cheek rested on his arm, and his hair fell wildly over a brow that now
worked under the influence of his dreams. Constance put the light softly