“When,” said she one morning, as she was walking with Lady Erpingham upon a terrace beneath the windows of the castle, which overlooked the country for miles,--“when will you go with me, dear Lady Erpingham, to see those ruins of which I have heard so much and so often, and which I have never been able to persuade you to visit? Look! the day is so clear that we can see their outline now--there, to the right of that church!--they cannot be so very far from Wendover.” “Godolphin Priory is about twelve miles off,” said Lady Erpingham; “but it may seem nearer, for it is situated on the highest spot of the county. Poor Arthur Godolphin! he is lately dead!” Lady Erpingham sighed. “I never heard you speak of him before.” “There might be a reason for my silence, Constance. He was the person, of all whom I ever saw, who appeared to me when I was at your age, the most fascinating. Not, Constance, that I was in love with him, or that he gave me any reason to become so through gratitude for any affection on his part. It was a girl’s fancy, idle and short-lived--nothing more!” “And the young Godolphin--the boy who, at so early an age, has made himself known for his eccentric life abroad?” “Is his son; the present owner of those ruins, and, I fear, of little more, unless it be the remains of a legacy received from a relation.” “Was the father extravagant, then?” “Not he! But his father had exceeded a patrimony greatly involved, and greatly reduced from its ancient importance. All the lands we see yonder---those villages, those woods--once belonged to the Godolphins. They were the most ancient and the most powerful family in this part of England; but the estates dwindled away with each successive generation, and when Arthur Godolphin, my Godolphin, succeeded to the property, nothing was left for him but the choice of three evils--a profession, obscurity, or a wealthy marriage. My father, who had long destined me for Lord Erpingham, insinuated that it was in me that Mr. Godolphin wished to find the resource I have last mentioned, and that in such resource was my only attraction in his eyes. I have some reason to believe he proposed to the Duke; but he was silent to me, from whom, girl as I was, he might have been less certain of refusal.” “What did he at last?” “Married a lady who was supposed to be an heiress; but he had scarcely enjoyed her fortune a year before it became the subject of a lawsuit. He lost the cause and the dowry; and, what was worse, the expenses of litigation, and the sums he was obliged to refund, reduced him to what, for a man of his rank, might be considered absolute poverty. He was thoroughly chagrined and soured by this event; retired to those ruins, or rather to the small cottage that adjoins them, and there lived to the day of his death, shunning society, and certainly not exceeding his income.” “I understand you: he became parsimonious.” “To the excess which his neighbours called miserly.” “And his wife?”