the image of his beautiful Constance. The reign of passion, the magic of
those sweet illusions, that ineffable yearning which possession mocks,
although it quells at last, were indeed for ever over; but a friendship
more soft and genial than exists in any relation, save that of husband and
wife, had sprung up, almost as by a miracle (so sudden was it), between
breasts for years divided. And the experience of those years had taught
Godolphin how frail and unsubstantial had been all the other ties he had
formed. He wondered, as sitting alone with Constance, her tenderness
recalled the past, her wit enlivened the present, and his imagination
still shed a glory and a loveliness over the future, that he had been so
long insensible to the blessing of that communion which he now
experienced. He did not perceive what in fact was the case--that the
tastes and sympathies of each, blunted by that disappointment which is the
child of experience, were more willing to concede somewhat to the tastes
and sympathies of the other; that Constance gave a more indulgent
listening to his beautiful refinements of an ideal and false epicurism;
that he, smiling still, smiled with kindness, not with scorn, at the
sanguine politics, the worldly schemes, and the rankling memories of the
intriguing Constance. Fortunately, too, for her, the times were such,
that men who never before dreamed of political interference were roused
and urged into the mighty conflux of battling interests, which left few
moderate and none neuter. Every coterie resounded with political
war-cries; every dinner rang; from soup to the coffee, with the merits of
the bill; wherever Godolphin turned for refuge, Reform still assailed him;
and by degrees the universal feeling, that was at first ridiculed, was at
last, although reluctantly, admitted by his mind.

"Why," said he, one clay, musingly, to Radclyffe, whom he met in the old
Green Park,--(for since the conversation recorded between Radclyffe and
Constance the former came little to Erpingham House), "why should I not