summoned her to the more public apartments. I should have said that
Godolphin slept in the house; for, coming from a distance and through
country roads, Lady Erpingham had proffered him that hospitality, and he
had willingly accepted it. Before the appointed hour, he was at the
appointed spot.

He had passed the hours till then without even seeking his pillow. In
restless strides across his chamber, he had revolved those words with
which Constance had seemed to deny the hopes she herself had created. All
private and more selfish schemes or reflections had vanished, as by magic,
from the mind of a man prematurely formed, but not yet wholly hardened in
the mould of worldly speculation. He thought no more of what he should
relinquish in obtaining her hand; with the ardour of boyish and real love,
he thought only of her. It was as if there existed no world but the
little spot in which she breathed and moved. Poverty, privation, toil,
the change of the manners and habits of his whole previous life, to those
of professional enterprise and self-denial;--to all this he looked
forward, not so much with calmness as with triumph.

"Be but Constance mine!" said he again and again; and again and again
those fatal words knocked at his heart, "No hope--none!" and he gnashed
his teeth in very anguish, and muttered, "But mine she will not--she will
never be!"

Still, however, before the hour of noon, something of his habitual
confidence returned to him. He had succeeded, though but partially, in
reasoning away the obvious meaning of the words; and he ascended to the
chamber from the gardens, in which he had sought, by the air, to cool his
mental fever, with a sentiment, ominous and doubtful indeed, but still
removed from despondency and despair.