notice--his whole soul--to the spot which was hallowed by Constance
Vernon. He saw her engaged with a man rich, powerful, and handsome. He
saw that she listened to her partner with evident interest--that he
addressed her with evident admiration. His heart sank within him; he felt
faint and sick; then came anger--mortification; then agony and despair.
All his former resolutions--all his prudence, his worldliness, his
caution, vanished at once; he felt only that he loved, that he was
supplanted, that he was undone. The dark and fierce passions of his
youth, of a nature in reality wild and vehement, swept away at once the
projects and the fabrics of that shallow and chill philosophy he had
borrowed from the world, and deemed the wisdom of the closet. A cottage
and a desert with Constance--Constance all his--heart and hand--would have
been Paradise: he would have nursed no other ambition, nor dreamed of a
reward beyond. Such effect has jealousy upon us. We confide, and we
hesitate to accept a boon: we are jealous, and we would lay down life to
attain it.

"What a handsome fellow Erpingham is!" said a young man in a cavalry
regiment.

Godolphin heard and groaned audibly.

"And what a devilish handsome girl he is dancing with!" said another
young man, from Oxford.

"Oh, Miss Vernon!--By Jove, Erpingham seems smitten. What a capital thing
it would be for her!"

"And for him, too!" cried the more chivalrous Oxonian.