that even here I have too humble an opinion of myself to complain of changes which may, for aught I know, be only deserved, by the presumption I have shown in setting up my own judgment against theirs. To such, however, it can be of little consequence whither I go, or when I return-and if I never do return-"

"Dear Mortimer," exclaimed Constance, here thrown off her guard, and alive to all her father had told her, "what mean these dark hints? I have heard reports that you mean to espouse, nay, risk your life, in the cause of persons who, my father says, are rebels, and I entreat you to tell me what you mean by never returning.'

"Merely," replied De Vere, "as was once said by another, that if I be foiled in my enterprise, there will be one shamed that never was gracious;' and in the world I fill up a place which may be better supplied when I have made it empty.' As for those whom Lord Mowbray calls rebels, his lordship and I may differ."

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True, Mortimer," cried Constance; " and whatever you determine, I am sure it will be all in honour." She then added, with resumed firmness, accompanied by a forced smile, "I have often, you know, scolded you for false opinions both of yourself and others. The supposition that you are abandoned is a proof of it, and sits as ill upon you as it would upon me, whom I know you think surrounded by friends.”

"You! Constance! You abandoned! The queen of life, or all that in life is worth following! You! the ornament of the court, and the focus of elegant gayety!"

Lady Constance shook her head, and in truth felt heavy at heart at observing that the general opinion which she felt to be of so little consequence to her real well-being had extended itself to De Vere. She was therefore only relieved by the entrance of her father.

Lord Mowbray, though he had fixed the hour of meeting, for which he was himself too late, was not over-pleased at finding De Vere alone with his daughter; and his look of mistrust only excited still more the revolting spirit of his nephew.

He was so evidently contemptuous, as well as displeased, that for the moment De Vere both felt and looked as if he abandoned all his tenderness, as well as all his hope, about his cousin; and with an erect front stood before them both, seemingly in proud independence. Lord Mowbray never liked him under this appearance;

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and to Constance it seemed so undeserved, as well as so new, that each of these cousins, formerly such magnets to one another, now really wished the interview to be over. So easy is the progress of misunderstanding sometimes with the best, so prone is poor human nature to multiply its own mortifications.

It must, however, be said for Lord Mowbray, that in addition to his fears of De Vere, he had fears of another kind, which had been cruelly excited in consequence of a discovery of a supposed intrigue that menaced his power. In these moments he was too little kind to anybody to be very benignant towards a man whom he never had loved, and always feared, even before he had injured him. He seemed, therefore, peculiarly distant and formal, though the ruling subject of his thoughts could not help showing itself.

"Young men," said he, "are right to travel; but I could have wished you had chosen another companion. The friendship of Mr. Wentworth is dangerous, and will weigh down any one who has his fortune to make; as you have found to your cost."

"And yet," said De Vere (eager for his friend, though full of very different thoughts), "no man has such an increasing influence among those whom you suppose, my dear uncle, to be solely intent upon this fortune-making design."

"Increasing!" exclaimed Lord Mowbray, biting his lip; "and does he really expect success?"

"In his great object," replied De Vere," although perhaps not in the acquisition of place."

"What other object can he have?" said Lord Mowbray, with something like contempt.

"To effect, whether in or out of place," observed De Vere, "a reform in the rules of action which seem to govern all ranks; to make power more powerful, by establishing it on public opinion; and to give a better bias to public opinion itself; in a word, to make the king what he wishes, and what he is formed to be, the man of his people."

"Excellent schoolboy visions," returned Lord Mowbray, in a tone of sneer, alarm, and anger mixed. "Such theories attempted to be put in practice will ruin the state." They may ruin particular statesmen," said De Vere, "but they will regenerate public virtue, of which the state stands so much in need; and we may then see what

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the country so much desires,-an administration governing for the country, not for themselves."

He said this (excited by the subject, spite of other thoughts) with so much animation, that Constance, however averse to these conversations, could not help admiring him. But both her admiration and his excitement were quickly lost in the sour looks and language of Lord Mowbray.

"Nephew," said the latter, "you do ill in letting such sentiments escape you. They almost amount to sedition; and, considering who I am, they seem meant as a personal affront."

"My dear uncle, nothing was further from my thoughts." "Perhaps so," replied Lord Mowbray; "and I am unwilling to remind you, considering all that has been done for you, that to me such conduct is at least not grateful."

"Done for me!" thought De Vere, repressing the exclamation when he saw that Constance was affected by this speech of her father. Lord Mowbray, however, was evidently angry, as well as uneasy, and looking towards the door, showed plainly that he thought the sooner this audience of leave was finished the better. De Vere observed it, and tried to find comfort where he had so often met with it-in Constance. But she seemed, from whatever cause, as uneasy as her father. Her eyes were averted and downcast; and an awkward constraint, for the first time in her life, sat upon the brow of the most open and beautiful countenance in the world.

Except, therefore, by a slight pressure from her hand, when De Vere finally took his leave, it required far more vanity than his to believe that he was much above the commonest of her acquaintance. The thought banished his pride, and made his courage sink, as, with a hurried step and beating heart he left the room. Nor as he passed through the hall did he notice the respectful salutations of a train of bowing domestics, whom, somehow or another, he had inspired with more than the esteem that is usually felt for a master's friend by the common herd of London footmen. The porter in particular, who had known him from a boy, wished him health and success, with an emphasis evidently sincere. To this, so much was he absorbed, he could scarcely reply, but hastened through the square without looking behind him; and it was some minutes before he recollected this part at least

of the farewell he had received. He then felt it, from contrasting it with another, and was so alive to it, that, taxing himself with haughtiness and indifference for what was meant so well, he could have returned to show his sense of it, had he known exactly in what manner to disclose his feeling.

"These good fellows," said he, "are capable of attachment, and give me what others, from whom I expected differently, deny me. It is plain that my departure is a relief to my uncle, if not to Lady Constance herself!"

The thought called the blood to his cheek, and much of his pride returned. He accused his cousin of caprice, of coldness, of injustice; and had he been other than exactly what he was, he might, for a few seconds, have endeavoured to lash himself into an opinion that he had given her a consequence of which she was unworthy. But De Vere was too worthy himself, and too little like Lord Cleveland in this respect, for such a temper to continue. His resentment (if it had so decided a character) melted away before he got the length of the street which led to his lodgings; and before he got home, he had restored his mind to thoughts more worthy both of himself and of her to whom they pointed.

"No!" said he; "let me not take refuge in the equivocal consolation that she is in fault. It is plain I have no interest in her heart. But that does not diminish her excellence." Then he added, with a sigh, "She never gave me encouragement. I have no complaint to make." This acquittal acted two ways. It indeed forced him to confess that his affection was hopeless. But he had rejected all mean and unjust accusations, which might for a moment have supported him. He had decided honourably by his cousin, and in doing so he felt as a man of honour will always feel.

And thus, we grieve to say, parted two persons who valued each other, perhaps, even at the moment, morė than aught else in the world; and thus it is that minds the most congenial, and seemingly formed to coalesce in the sweetest union, may sometimes, by missing the precise moment of explanation, after a slight misunderstanding, separate for ever. Let us learn a lesson from it which may be useful to the proudest heart and the most delicate sensibility,-that there is no pride so high, nor delicacy so refined, as to be above the aid of mutual concession. How many blossoms of happiness have

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been shaken from the tree, and died prematurely, and how much sourness has been ingrafted in their places, merely for the want of such timely sacrifice.

Yet, alas! who and what are we,-worms as we are in the eye of Omnipotence,-that we should thus sport with the good he destined for us? If every proud spirit which labours under mistake would, in its most swelling and "palmy state," thus whisper to itself, what evils might be spared in the history of man!

CHAPTER XIV.

A COURTIER'S FEARS..

Though I am daughter to his blood, I am not to his manners.-SHAKSPEARE.

Why, he stalks up and down like a peacock, a stride and a stand; ruminates like a hostess that hath no arithmetic but her brain, to set down her reckoning; bites his lip with a politic regard, as who should say, there were wit in this head, if 'twould out-Ibid.

IN the last chapter we described the parting between Constance and her cousin as a proud one. But, De Vere gone, Lady Constance felt the manner in which both she and her father had suffered him to leave them. The necessity she thought there was to conceal even the subdued regard she had for him had been strengthened, so as to give her additional courage by the seeming loftiness of his manner,—which, from her father's entrance, had evidently, though after a struggle, got the better of his tenderness. This kept her in a kind of neutral position; and the violence of Lord Mowbray had afterward so confused her, that in the actual moment of parting she seemed almost in a state of indifference.

But hers, after all, was a young heart. Nothing could break in upon her sense of right; but she was not one of those heroines who are so absorbed by high principle as to be able to assert it without effort, and almost without emotion. She felt, therefore, as the gentle being she was would necessarily feel; and as her cousin's footsteps died away upon the stairs, and she thought of the untoward difference between Lord Mowbray and him, in this