ry noticeable in women when they have once obtained
the object of their life--the sudden check that is given to the impulses
of their genius!--Content to have found the realisation of their chief
hope, they do not look beyond to other but lesser objects, as they
had been wont to do before. Hence we see so many who, before marriage,
strike us with admiration, from the vividness of their talents, and
after marriage settle down into the mere machine. We wonder that we ever
feared, while we praised, the brilliancy of an intellect that seems
now never to wander from the limits of house and hearth. So with poor
Lucilla; her restless mind and ardent genius had once seized on every
object within their reach:--she had taught herself music; she had
learned the colourings and lines of art; not a book came in her way,
but she would have sought to extract from it a new idea. But she was now
with Godolphin, and all other occupations for thought were gone; she
had nothing beyond his love to wish for, nothing beyond his character
to learn. He was the circle of hope, and her heart its centre; all lines
were equal to that heart, so that they touched him. It is clear that
this devotion prevented her, however, from fitting herself to be his
companion; she did not seek to accomplish herself, but to study him:
thus in her extreme love was another reason why that love was not
adequately returned.

But Godolphin felt all the responsibility that he had taken on himself.
He felt how utterly the happiness of this poor and solitary child--for
a child she was in character, and almost in years--depended upon him. He
roused himself, therefore, from his ordinary selfishness, and rarely,
if ever, gave way to the irritation which she unknowingly but constantly
kept alive. The balmy and delicious climate, the liquid serenity of the
air, the majestic repose with which Nature invested the loveliness that
surrounded their home, contributed to soften and calm his mind. And
he had persuaded Lucilla to look without despair upon his occasional
although short absences. Sometimes he passed two or three weeks at Rome,
sometimes at Naples or Florence. He knew so well how necessary such
intervals of absence are to the preservation of love, to the defeat of
that satiety which creeps over us with custom, that he had resolutely
enforced it as a necessity, although always under the excuse of
business--a plea that Lucilla could understand and not resist; for the
word bus