While Godolphin was thus talking with Lady Delmour, his whole soul was
with Constance; of her only he thought, and on her he thirsted for
revenge. There is a curious phenomenon in love, showing how much vanity
has to do with even the best species of it; when, for your mistress to
prefer another, changes all your affection into hatred:--is it the loss of
the mistress, or her preference to the other? The last, to be sure: for
if the former, you would only grieve--but jealousy does not make you
grieve, it makes you enraged; it does not sadden, it stings. After all,
as we grow old, and look back on the "master passion," how we smile at the
fools it made of us--at the importance we attach to it--of the millions
that have been governed by it! When we examine the passion of love, it is
like examining the character of some great roan; we are astonished to
perceive the littlenesses that belong to it. We ask in wonder, "How come
such effects from such a cause?"

Godolphin continued talking sentiment with Lady Delmour, until her lord,
who was very fond of his carriage horses, came up and took her away; and
then, perhaps glad to be relieved, Percy sauntered into the ballroom,
where, though the crowd was somewhat thinned, the dance was continued
with that spirit which always seems to increase as the night advances.

For my own part, I now and then look late in at a ball as a warning and
grave memento of the flight of time. No amusement belongs of right so
essentially to the young, in their first youth,--to the unthinking, the
intoxicated,--to those whose blood is an elixir.

"If Constance be woman," said Godolphin to himself, as he returned to the
ballroom, "I will yet humble her to my will. I have not learned the
science so long, to be now foiled in the first moment I have seriously
wished to triumph."