their parting moment, she underwent a revulsion, a sort of remorse of spirit, which much affected her. "It was right," thought she, “not to encourage the suspicion that De Vere was a lover; but it was not right to let him depart as if he were not a cousin." Luckily for her agitation, Lord Mowbray, the very moment that De Vere left the room, had returned to the perusal of a letter from Kew, with which he had entered, open in hand, and which, in causing him the most serious alarms, had occasioned much of the splenetic humour he had displayed towards his nephew. Absorbed in this, it gave time for Lady Constance to recover, and, indeed, it proved a considerable diversion to her attention: for the anxious statesman was in no inconsiderable agitation himself. With a heart softened by the recent occurrence, and in want of all the support a parent could afford-desirous, too, of giving herself the only consolation which could compensate the exertion she had made in that interchange of sympathy which makes some fathers and their children all in all to one another-how was she disappointed and grieved to find that, whatever was the cause of Lord Mowbray's anguish (for it was no less), it was not from her attempted soothing that he could derive any comfort. Yet, spite of her own uneasiness, she dressed her soft and beautiful countenance in its most endearing smile. She played with his hand, and with her cheek close to his, asked, modestly, but tenderly, if she might not be permitted to know the cause of his trouble. It was in vain ; Lord Mowbray remained fixed in thought, with a knit brow and a countenance of iron; and, observing that ladies could know nothing of the cares that weighed down statesmen, desired that Mr. Clayton might be sent for. "My dear father," said Constance, "you are evidently affected by some untoward business, if you are not really ill; and may I not be permitted at least to share what affects you, though I cannot cure it?" Lord Mowbray, however, continued in silent thought, and unrelaxed features, for some time; when, regardless of her innocent caresses, he replied, "I have often told you, Lady Constance, that politics are above your comprehension. Indeed," said he, rising, and striding across the room, "they are above the com prehension of any one, even of those who are admitted into the secrets of courts and cabinets. Storms often arise where least expected; and little wise are those who think office has nothing but sweets, or that office men are always on beds of roses." Constance would have retired, as despairing of power to console him, though wondering, and fearful of some new and dangerous crisis. But the agitated earl motioned her to remain. "Stay," said he, continuing to walk the room, and contemplating his red riband with no seeming pleasure. "Since Clayton is not in the way, I may as well disburthen myself of what presses upon me; though you can give no advice in a matter you cannot possibly understand. At the same time it will show you what some men are." one. Rough as it was, Constance felt something like pleasure at this promise of confidence where she so much wished it, and she listened respectfully for what was to follow. In truth, the good lord was too big with his vexation not to hope for some relief by disclosing it, even though it was to a woman, and the secret a political But what was the astonishment of Constance to find that the apprehended danger, and all this moralizing upon the uncertainties of place and power, arose out of the conduct of an old statesman, who in every body's opinion had been for ever laid upon the shelf. As he was known to Lady Constance, who, in common with the rest of the world, admired his wit and vivacity, but supposed that age and wrinkles, though they had not extinguished his spirits, must have long dispelled all worldly ambition, she ventured to console her father on this equivocal ground. With one foot in the grave, it could not enter the fancy of the blooming Constance that such a man could be a subject for ambition to sport with. She knew not that ambition never grows old. Lord Mowbray smiled superiority at this simplicity of his daughter; but observed, not without trepidation, "Alas! you know not the arts of a hoary politician when self is in question." Lord Mowbray in this stopped not to consider how blind self may be when it ventures to moralize; nor did the filial-minded Constance detect it in her father. But Lord Mowbray went on, and with many hesitations, looking with anxiety during intervals at the letter, which he still grasped, he exclaimed, "Yes! yes! he has fire enough left, and cunning enough too, to endanger us; and so Lord Oldcastle thinks. Yet, with his fortune, and high enough in rank, what can there possibly be in mere office that, at such an age, can tempt him thus to sacrifice himself?" Now, as Lord Mowbray was little more than sixty when he said this, and his dangerous rival near fourscore, we are not to suppose that he could be conscious of any inconsistency in saying it. In truth, his warmth and manner indicated nothing but sincerity even with himself; nor, as we have before observed, was his pupil disposed to seek for any thing else, when it was her father that spoke. But judge of her surprise when he acquainted her with the peculiar ground of his fears, which was, that this time-furrowed rival sought and was admitted ("No doubt," said Lord Mowbray, "for the low purpose of acquiring favour") into all the private parties at court, nay, into the very games of the royal children; "And you will be astonished when I tell you of a play for them which he himself has invented." Constance looking curiosity, her father proceeded to inform her, that the eldest of the young princes condescended to shoot him with paper arrows, till he dropped down seemingly dead, when the joy was for the little prince to kiss him to life again. "This, and hot cockles, and forfeits," said Lord Mowbray, shaking his head, "would, under such a man, endanger a stronger administration than ours: nor should I be surprised if Wentworth, and perhaps even your cousin, flown as they are, were at the bottom of it."9 Constance thought within herself how little her father could know his nephew, when he attributed such designs to him; and her respect for the open character of Wentworth equally exempted him from the imputation. In fact, the death of Beaufort, and the effect this had produced on many characters whom, from what she knew of them, she honoured in the world, had given a shock to her mind from which she had not recovered; and the present conversation exhibiting (as even her filial reverence could not prevent her from imagining) the most childish fears, was any thing but agreeable to her feelings or her principles. Ambition, indeed, as she had seen it conducted, had already had too sinister an effect upon private happiness to make her quite so favourable to it as, in her natural sentiments, considering it as a noble passion, she had originally been. We have not denied that she had been somewhat dazzled at the influence which, as a young and elegant female, she was told she might acquire among those who conducted the state; and, for a moment, her love of all virtue, public as well as private, gave her an elevation, to the pleasure of which she yielded. But her modesty first (always the surest index to inform a woman whether she is right or wrong), and afterward her judgment, nay, her very pride itself, combined to make her tremble on the threshold, at entering on such a career. There was nothing she thought so little a woman's province as party; and she looked with little reverence on the busy exertion of a young and beautiful peeress, who with the highest attraction, and all the seeming qualities of a good wife and mother, as De Vere once observed, unsexed herself by becoming the focus of political rage and intrigue. In her feelings upon this point, she had been confirmed by her prudent friend Lady Clanellan; and she had for some time, on this, as well as almost every other account, wished for the summer to close upon a way of life for which the more she saw of it she felt less and less fitted. For all these reasons, therefore, though anxious to sooth her father's distress, she was never less disposed to enter into the causes that had produced it; and, but that the afflicted statesman was her father, she would have laughed outright at the anecdote on which his affliction was principally founded. She was staggered, however, by the authority of Lord Oldcastle, and began to wonder at these lords of the destinies of nations, who seemed to hold their own destiny by so poor a thread that a child might break it. Her excellent judgment, young as she was, had full room for exercise, and she could not help confessing that ambition, as she saw it, was a very different thing from what the generous but inexperienced flight of her mind had taught her to believe. It was, equally with the luxury and splendour in which she had lately lived, inadequate to all she had hoped for, on taking, as she was told she was to do, possession of the world. "But where then," said she, when her conference with her father broke up, and she retired to her closet,"where is happiness really to be found ??? The thought engaged her in a long contemplation of what she called the nothings that had absorbed her attention for so many months, and her little pleasure in these led her to Castle Mowbray, whence she began to wish she had never stirred. But Castle Mowbray was not to her what it had been during the summer; and, with every seeming blessing upon earth, this young favourite of nature as well as of fortune was any thing but happy CHAPTER XV. DEPARTURE. What envious streaks Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east! I must be gone and live-or stay and die.-SHAKSPEARE. The COULD De Vere have penetrated his cousin's mind during the hours consequent to his last interview with her, it might probably have relieved his own from some of the weight which oppressed it in the moment of his leaving London with Mr. Wentworth. He would not, perhaps, have found there the species of feeling which might have determined his own heart what to wish, or how to act: but he would have seen that the person who he thought had begun to listen to the flatteries of the world was as pure as ever in her nature, and as free as ever from the tainting effect of those flatteries. contrary opinion, however, had got a little, a very little hold of him, and as his postchaise drove through Grosvenor Square before five in the morning, and he looked up at the close-shuttered windows of her chamber, he felt an unaccountable heaviness from the mixed nature of his reflections. She was then, he thought, in slumber, jaded perhaps with the vigil of some nightly ball, where all the incense of the state had been offered her, and her only embarrassment had been to decide which pleasure she should most enjoy, or on what candidate for her favour she should bestow most of her notice. At any rate he supposed her indifferent to any feelings that might be entertained for her by himself; and although |