"Wear this, dearest," said Godolphin, taking a rose from a flower-stand by
the window, "in memory of that ball at Wendover Castle, which although
itself passed bitterly enough for me, has yet left so many happy
recollections." Constance put the rose into her bosom; its leaves were
then all fresh and brilliant--so were her prospects for the future. He
kissed her forehead as they parted;--they parted for the last time.

Godolphin, left alone, turned to the window, which, opening to the ground,
invited him forth among the flowers that studded the grass-plots which
sloped away to the dark and unwavering trees that girded the lawn. That
pause of nature which precedes a storm ever had a peculiar attraction to
his mind; and instinctively he sauntered from the house, wrapped in the
dreaming, half-developed thought which belonged to his temperament.
Mechanically he strayed on until he found himself beside the still lake
which the hollows of the dismantled park embedded. There he paused,
gazing unconsciously on the gloomy shadows which fell from the arches of
the Priory and the tall trees around. Not a ripple stirred the broad
expanse of waters; the birds had gone to rest; no sound, save the voice of
the distant brook that fed the lake beside which, on the first night of
his return to his ancestral home, he had wandered with Constance, broke
the universal silence. That voice was never mute. All else might be
dumb; but that living stream, rushing through its rocky bed, stilled not
its repining music. Like the soul of the landscape is the gush of a fresh
stream; it knows no sleep, no pause; it works for ever--the life, the
cause of life to all around. The great frame of nature may repose, but
the spirit of the waters rests not for a moment. As the soul of the
landscape is the soul of man, in our deepest slumbers its course glides
on, and works unsilent, unslumbering, through its destined channel.