the severe and grating shock which the sense of estrangement brings to a
woman's heart; she was sensible that Godolphin was never so entirely, so
passionately her own, as towards the close of their mortal connection.
Every thing around them breathed of their first love. This was that home
of Godolphin's to which, from the splendid halls of Wendover, the young
soul of the proud orphan had so often and so mournfully flown with a
yearning and wistful interest: this was that spot in which he, awaking
from the fever of the world, had fed his first dreams of her. The scene,
the solitude, was as a bath to their love: it braced, it freshened, it
revived its tone. They wandered, they read, they thought together; the
air of the spot was an intoxication. The world around and without was
agitated; they felt it not: the breakers of the great deep died in murmurs
on their ear. Ambition lulled its voice to Constance; Godolphin had
realised his visions of the ideal. Time had dimmed their young beauty,
but their eyes saw it not; they were young, they were all beautiful, to
each other.

And Constance hung on the steps of her lover--still let that name be his!
She could not bear to lose him for a moment: a vague indistinctness of
fear seized her if she saw him not. Again and again, in the slumbers of
the night, she stretched forth her arms to feel that he was near; all her
pride, her coldness seemed gone, as by a spell; she loved as the softest,
the fondest, love. Are we, 0 Ruler of the future! imbued with the
half-felt spirit of prophecy as the hour of evil approaches--the great,
the fierce, the irremediable evil of a life? In this depth and intensity
of their renewed passion, was there not something preternatural? Did they
not tremble as they loved? They were on a spot to which the dark waters
were slowly gathering; they clung to the Hour, for eternity was lowering
round.