country--to-morrow if you will."

And as Constance was about to answer, he sealed her lips with his kiss.

But Lady Erpingham was not one of those who waver in what they deem a
duty. She passed the night in stern and sleepless commune with herself;
she was aware of all that she hazarded--all that she renounced: she was
even tortured by scruples as to the strange oath that had almost unsexed
her. Still, in spite of all, she felt that nothing would excuse her in
suffering that gifted and happy intellect, now awakened from the sleep of
the Sybarite, to fall back into its lazy and effeminate repose. She had
no right to doom a human soul to rot away in its clay. Perhaps, too, she
hoped, as all polemical enthusiasts do, that Godolphin, once aroused,
would soon become her convert. Be that as it may, she delayed, on various
pretences, their departure from London. She went secretly the next day to
one of the proprietors of the close Boroughs, the existence of which was
about to be annihilated, and a few days afterwards Godolphin received a
letter informing him that he had been duly elected member for ----. I
will not say what were his feelings at these tidings. Perhaps, such is
man's proud and wayward heart, he felt shame to be so outdone by
Constance.

CHAPTER LXV.

NEW VIEWS OF A PRIVILEGED ORDER.--THE DEATH-BED OF AUGUSTUS SAVILLE.

This event might indeed have been an era in the life of Percy Godolphin,
had that life been spared to a more extended limit than it was; and yet,
so long had his ambition been smoothed and polished away by his
peculiarities of thought, and so little was his calm and indifferent tone