. His nights grew once more tranquil,
and freed from the dark dreams that had tormented his brain; and even
the cool and unimaginative Constance could scarcely divest herself of
the wild fancy that, when Lucilla was near, a secret and preternatural
sympathy between Godolphin and the reader of the stars had produced
that influence over his nightly dreams which paled, and receded, and
vanished, as Lucilla departed from the actual circle in which he lived.

It was at this time, too, that a change was perceptible in Godolphin's
habits, and crept gradually over the character of his thoughts.
Dissipation ceased to allure him, the light wit of his parasites palled
upon his ear; magnificence had lost its gloss, and the same fastidious,
exacting thirst for the ideal which had disappointed him in the better
objects of life, began now to discontent him with its glittering
pleasures.

The change was natural and the causes not difficult to fathom. The fact
was, that Godolphin had now arrived at that period of existence when a
man's character is almost invariably subject to great change; the crisis
in life's fever, when there is a new turn in our fate, and our moral
death or regeneration is sealed by the silent wavering, or the solemn
decision of the Hour. Arrived at the confines of middle age, there is
an outward innovation in the whole system; unlooked-for symptoms break
forth in the bodily, unlooked-for symptoms in the mental, frame.
It happened to Godolphin that, at this critical period, a chance, a
circumstance, a straw, had reunited his long interrupted, but never
stifled affections to the image of his beautiful Constance. The reign
of passion, the magic of those sweet illusions, that ineffable yearning
which possession mocks, although it quells at last, were indeed for ever
over; but a friendship more soft and genial than exists in any relation,
save that of husband and wife, had sprung up, almost as by a miracle (so
sudden was it), between breasts for years divided. And the experience
of those years had taught Godolphin how frail and unsubstantial had been
all the other ties he had formed. He wondered, as sitting alone with
Constance, her tenderness recalled the past, her wit enlivened the
present, and his imagination still shed a glory and a loveliness over
the future, that he had been so long insensible to the blessing of that
communion which he now experienced. He did not perceive what in fact
was the case--that the taste