She felt that he had confessed he loved her! And was she not happy at
that thought? She was: it was her happiest moment. But, in that sort of
vague and indistinct shrinking from the subject with which a woman who
loves hears a disclosure of love from him on whose lips it is most sweet,
she muttered some confused attempt to change the subject, and quickened
her horse's pace. Godolphin did not renew the topic so interesting and so
dangerous, only, as with the winding of the road the landscape gradually
faded from their view, he said, in a low voice, as if to himself,--"How
long, how fondly, shall I remember this day!"

CHAPTER XVI.

GODOLPHIN'S RETURN HOME.--HIS SOLILOQUY.--LORD ERPINGHAM'S ARRIVAL AT
WENDOVER CASTLE.--THE EARL DESCRIBED.--HIS ACCOUNT OF GODOLPHIN'S LIFE AT
ROME.

With a listless step, Godolphin re-entered the threshold of his
cottage-home. He passed into a small chamber, which was yet the largest
in his house. The poor and scanty furniture scattered around; the old,
tuneless, broken harpsichord; the worn and tattered carpet; the tenantless
birdcage in the recess by the window; the bookshelves, containing some
dozens of worthless volumes; the sofa of the last century (when, if people
knew comfort, they placed it not in lounging) small, narrow, highbacked,
hard, and knotted; these, just as his father had left, just as his boyhood
had seen, them, greeted him with a comfortless and chill, though familiar
welcome. It was evening: he ordered a fire and lights; and leaning his
face on his hand as he contemplated the fitful and dusky outbreakings of
the flame through the bars of the niggard and contracted grate, he sat
himself down to hold commune with his heart.