contentious world with which we strive--we shall turn, after each
effort, to our own hearts, and find there a comfort and a shelter. All
things will bind us closer and closer to each other. The thought of
our past solitude, the hope of our future objects, will only feed the
fountain of our present love. And how much sweeter, Constance, will be
honours to you, if we thus win them; sanctified as they will be by the
sacrifices we have made; by the thought of the many hours in which we
desponded, yet took consolation from each other; by the thought how we
sweetened mortifications by sympathy, and made even the lowest successes
noble by the endearing associations with which we allied them! How much
sweeter to you will be such honours than those which you might command
at once, but accompanied by a cold heart; rendered wearisome because won
with ease and low because undignified by fame! Oh, Constance! am I not
heard? Have not love, nature, sense, triumphed?"

As he spoke, he had risen gently, and wound his arms around her
not reluctant form: her head reclined upon his bosom; her hand was
surrendered to his; and his kiss stole softly and unchidden to her
cheek. At that instant, the fate of both hung on a very hair. How
different might the lot, the character, of each have been, had
Constance's lips pronounced the words that her heart already recorded!
And she might have done so; but as she raised her eyes, the same object
that had before affected Godolphin came vividly upon her, and changed,
as by an electric shock, the whole current of her thoughts. Full and
immediately before her was the picture of her father. The attitude there
delineated, so striking at all times, seemed to Constance at that moment
more than ever impressive, and even awful in the _livingness_ of its
command. It was the face of Vernon in the act of speech--of warning--of
reproof; such as she had seen it often in private life; such as she had
seen it in his bitter maledictions on his hollow friends at the close
of his existence: nay, such as she had seen it,--only more fearful, and
ghastly with the hues of death,--in his last hours; in those hours in
which he had pledged her to the performance of his revenge, and bade her
live not for love but the memory of her sire.

With the sight of the face rushed upon her the dark and solemn
recollections of that time and of that vow. The weakness of love
vanished before the returning force of a sentiment nursed through