There had Godolphin, with the foreign but courtly freedom, the respectful and chivalric ease of his manners, often sought her; there had he lingered in order to detain her yet a moment and a moment longer from other company, seeking a sweet excuse in some remark on the books that strewed the tables, or the music in that recess, or the forest scene from those windows through which the moon of autumn now stole with its own peculiar power to soften and subdue.

As these recollections came across her, her step faltered and her colour faded from its glow: she paused a moment, cast a mournful glance round the room, and then tore herself away, descended the lofty staircase, passed the stone hall, melancholy with old banners and rusted crests, and bore her beauty and her busy heart into the thickening and gay crowd.
Her eye looked once more round for the graceful form of Godolphin: but he was not visible; and she had scarcely satisfied herself of this before Lord Erpingham, the hero of the evening, approached and claimed her hand.
"I have just performed my duty," said he, with a gallantry of speech not common to him, "now for my reward.

I have danced the first dance with Lady Margaret Midgecombe: I come, according to your promise, to dance the second with you." There was something in these words that stung one of the morbid remembrances in Miss Vernon's mind.

Lady Margaret Midgecombe, in ordinary life, would have been thought a good-looking, vulgar girl:--she was a Duke's daughter and she was termed a Hebe.

Her little nose, and her fresh colour, and her silly but not unmalicious laugh, were called enchanting; and all irregularities of feature and faults of shape were absolutely turned into merits by that odd commendation, so common with us--"A deuced fine girl; none of your regular beauties." Not only in the county of -- --shire, but in London, had Lady Margaret Midgecombe been set up as the rival beauty of Constance Vernon.