news of his departure from England with a tear. There are some
attachments, of which we so easily sound the depth, that the one never
thinks of exacting from the other the sacrifices that seemed inevitable
to more earnest affections. Fanny never dreamed of leaving her
theatrical career, and accompanying Godolphin; Godolphin never dreamed
of demanding it. These are the connections of the great world: my good
reader, learn the great world as you look at them!

All was soon settled. Godolphin was easily disembarrassed of his
commission. Six hundred a year from his fortune was allowed him during
his minority. He insisted on sharing this allowance with his father; the
moiety left to himself was quite sufficient for all that a man so young
could require. At the age of little more than seventeen, but with a
character which premature independence had half formed, and also half
enervated, the young Godolphin saw the shores of England recede before
him, and felt himself alone in the universe--the lord of his own fate.

CHAPTER X.

THE EDUCATION OF CONSTANCE'S MIND.

Meanwhile, Constance Vernon grew up in womanhood and beauty. All around
her contributed to feed that stern remembrance which her father's dying
words had bequeathed. Naturally proud, quick, susceptible, she felt
slights, often merely incidental, with a deep and brooding resentment.
The forlorn and dependent girl could not, indeed, fail to meet with many
bitter proofs that her situation was not forgotten by a world in which
prosperity and station are the cardinal virtues. Many a loud whisper,
many an intentional "aside," reached her haughty ear, and coloured
her pale cheek. Such accidents increased her early-formed asperity
of thought; chilled the gushing flood of her young affections; and
sharpened, with a relentless edge, her bitter and caustic hatred to
a society she deemed at once insolent and worthless. To a taste
intuitively fine and noble the essential vulgarities--the fierceness
to-day, the cringing to-morrow; the veneration for power; the
indifference to virtue, which characterised the framers and rulers of
"society"--could not but bring contempt as well as anger; and amidst
the brilliant circles, to which so many aspirers looked up with hopeless
ambition, Constance moved only to ridicule, to loathe, to despise.

So strong, so constantly nourished, was this sentiment of contempt, that
it lasted with equal bitterness when Constance afterwards became t