with white hair and a turned-up nose.
O Truth! what a hard path is thine! Does any keep it for three inches
together in the commonest trifle?--and yet two sides of my library are
filled with histories!

(1) Campbell.

CHAPTER XIII.

A BALL ANNOUNCED.--GODOLPHIN'S VISTT TO WENDOVER CASTLE.--HIS MANNERS
AND CONVERSATION.

Lady Erpingham (besides her daughter, Lady Eleanor, married to Mr.
Clare, a county member, of large fortune) was blessed with one son.

The present Earl had been for the last two years abroad. He had never,
since his accession to his title, visited Wendover Castle; and Lady
Erpingham one morning experienced the delight of receiving a letter from
him, dated Dover, and signifying his intention of paying her a visit.
In honour of this event, Lady Erpingham resolved to give a grand ball.
Cards were issued to all the families in the county; and, among others,
to Mr. Godolphin.

On the third day after this invitation had been sent to the person
I have last named, as Lady Erpingham and Constance were alone in the
saloon, Mr. Percy Godolphin was announced. Constance blushed as she
looked up, and Lady Erpingham was struck by the nobleness of his
address, and the perfect self-possession of his manner. And yet nothing
could be so different as was his deportment from that which she had been
accustomed to admire--from that manifested by the exquisites of the
day. The calm, the nonchalance, the artificial smile of languor, the
evenness, so insipid, yet so irreproachable, of English manners when
considered most polished,--all this was the reverse of Godolphin's
address and air. In short, in all he said or did there was something
foreign, something unfamiliar. He was abrupt and enthusiastic in
conversation, and used gestures in speaking. His countenance lighted up
at every word that broke from hint on the graver subjects of discussion.
You felt, indeed, with him that you were with a man of genius--a wayward
and a spoiled man, who had acquired his habits in solitude, but his
graces in the world.

They conversed about the ruins of the Priory, and Constance expressed
her admiration of their romantic and picturesque beauty. "Ah!" said he
smiling, but with a slight blush, in which Constance detected something
of pain; "I heard of your visit to my poor heaps of stone. My father
took great pleasure in the notice they attracted. When a proud man has
not riches to be proud of, he grows proud of the signs of his po