Constance perceived at a glance the whole train of consequences issuing from that one event; perceived and exulted. A glory had gone for ever from the party she abhorred. Her father was already avenged. She heard his scornful laugh ring forth from the depths of his forgotten grave. London emptied itself at once. England was one election. Godolphin remained almost alone. For the first time a sense of littleness crept over him; a feeling of insignificance, which wounded and galled his vain nature. In these great struggles he was nothing. The admired--the cultivated--_spirituel_--the splendid Godolphin, sank below the commonest adventurer, the coarsest brawler--yea, the humblest freeman, who felt his stake in the state, joined the canvass, swelled the cry, and helped in the mighty battle between old things and new, which was so resolutely begun. This feeling gave an impetus to the growth of the new aspirations he had already suffered his mind to generate; and Constance marked, with vivid delight, that he now listened to her plans with interest, and examined the political field with a curious and searching gaze. But she was soon condemned to a disappointment proportioned to her delight. Though Godolphin had hitherto taken no interest in party politics, his prejudices, his feelings, his habits of mind, were all the reverse of democratic. When he once began to examine the bearings of the momentous question that agitated England, he was not slow in coming to conclusions which threatened to produce a permanent disagreement between Constance and himself. “You wish me to enter Parliament, my dear Constance,” said he, with his quiet smile; “it would be an experiment dangerous to the union re-established between us. I should vote against your Bill.” “You!” exclaimed Constance, with warmth; “is it possible that you can sympathise with the fears of a selfish oligarchy--with the cause of the merchants and traffickers of the plainest right of a free people--the right to select their representatives?” “My dear Constance,” returned Godolphin, “my whole theory of Government is aristocratic. The right of the people to choose representatives!--you may as well say the right of the people to choose kings, or magistrates, and judges--or clergymen and archbishops! The people have, it is true, the abstract and original right to choose all these, and every year to chop and change them as they please, but the people, very properly, in all states, mortgage their elementary rights for one catholic and practical right--the right to be well governed. It may be no more to the advantage of the state that the People (that is, the majority, the populace) should elect uncontrolled all the members of the House of Commons--than that they should elect all the pastors of their religion. The sole thing we have to consider is, will they be better governed?” “Unquestionably,” said Constance.