n's heart; she was
sensible that Godolphin was never so entirely, so passionately her own,
as towards the close of their mortal connection. Every thing around
them breathed of their first love. This was that home of Godolphin's to
which, from the splendid halls of Wendover, the young soul of the proud
orphan had so often and so mournfully flown with a yearning and wistful
interest: this was that spot in which he, awaking from the fever of the
world, had fed his first dreams of her. The scene, the solitude, was as
a bath to their love: it braced, it freshened, it revived its tone. They
wandered, they read, they thought together; the air of the spot was an
intoxication. The world around and without was agitated; they felt
it not: the breakers of the great deep died in murmurs on their ear.
Ambition lulled its voice to Constance; Godolphin had realised his
visions of the ideal. Time had dimmed their young beauty, but their eyes
saw it not; they were young, they were all beautiful, to each other.

And Constance hung on the steps of her lover--still let that name be
his! She could not bear to lose him for a moment: a vague indistinctness
of fear seized her if she saw him not. Again and again, in the slumbers
of the night, she stretched forth her arms to feel that he was near;
all her pride, her coldness seemed gone, as by a spell; she loved as the
softest, the fondest, love. Are we, 0 Ruler of the future! imbued with
the half-felt spirit of prophecy as the hour of evil approaches--the
great, the fierce, the irremediable evil of a life? In this depth
and intensity of their renewed passion, was there not something
preternatural? Did they not tremble as they loved? They were on a spot
to which the dark waters were slowly gathering; they clung to the Hour,
for eternity was lowering round.

It was one evening that a foreboding emotion of this kind weighed
heavily on Constance. She pressed Godolphin's hand in hers, and when
he returned the pressure, she threw herself on his neck, and burst
into tears. Godolphin was alarmed; he covered her cheek with kisses, he
sought the cause of her emotion.

"There is no cause," answered Constance, recovering herself, but
speaking in a faltering voice, "only I feel the impossibility that this
happiness can last; its excess makes me shudder."

As she spoke, the wind rose and swept mourningly over the large leaves
of the chestnut-tree beneath which they stood: the serene stillness of
the eveni