The image of her dying father, his complaints, his accusations (the justice of which she never for an instant questioned), rose up before her in the brightest hours of the dance and the revel.

She was not one of those women whose meek and gentle nature would fly what wounds them: Constance had resolved to conquer.

Despising glitter and gaiety, and show, she burned, she thirsted for power--a power which could retaliate the insults she fancied she had received, and should turn condescension into homage.
This object, which every casual word, every heedless glance from another, fixed deeper and deeper in her heart, took a sort of sanctity from the associations with which she linked it--her father's memory and his dying breath.
At this moment in which we have portrayed her, all these restless, and sore, and haughty feelings were busy within; but they were combated, even while the more fiercely aroused, by one soft and tender thought--the image of Godolphin--of Godolphin, the spendthrift heir of a broken fortune and a fallen house.

She felt too deeply that she loved him; and, ignorant of his worldlier qualities, imagined that he loved her with all the devotion of that romance, and the ardour of that genius, which appeared to her to compose his character.

But this persuasion gave her now no delightful emotion.