Constance, overset by this cruel reproach, could not restrain her tears. She even hesitated, and the thought not merely of gratifying a parent, but of preserving his existence, operating upon her affectionate and gentle nature, she felt shaken, and was alive only to the sweetness of the rewards of filial duty. She looked with affection upon the face of her father, who, in his agitation, had rested his head on her bosom; forming a picture, which, prompted by other causes, would have been moving.

Under all his alarm, which was real enough, the earl felt the advantage he had gained; and thinking to complete it, he made a movement as if he would throw himself on his knees before his daughter, entreating, at the same time, that she would gratify him in this last and only wish of his heart; her refusal of which would, he said, send him to his death.

Afflicted, astonished, and wholly overcome by what she saw, the unhappy Constance could scarcely prevent an act which filled her with horror and consternation. It stupified all her senses, and shocked all her notions of decency and right. A sort of hysterical scream escaped her, and she implored him not to destroy her by such condescensions.

"At least," said she, falling on her own knees to him, "at least give me time! do not force a decision which, in making me miserable for ever, will not, cannot make you happy."

So saying, she bent her face on his hand, which she kissed, and watered with warm tears, the effusions of a struggle which almost broke her heart.

We will not say that her suffering did not affect Lord Mowbray; on the contrary, as he had always loved her as much as his nature would permit, he felt moved by the agony of mind which this contest had produced, and, trusting to the influence which he felt he had over her, he thought he might safely relieve her for the present, by granting the time for deliberation which she had implored. We do not know that he did this upon the principle, that "the woman who deliberates is lost," for Lord Mowbray had made few investigations concern

ing the female character. He knew, however, that he possessed his daughter's love. He knew the tenderness of her gentle nature; and, above all, he knew her refined notions of filial duty. Trusting to them all conjoined, he hoped every thing from the proposed deliberation; and, with caresses which, on any other occasion, would have filled the whole heart of Constance with happiness, he granted the delay proposed, and left her full of hope.

Possibly no woman ever suffered a greater struggle from the same cause, than she did at that moment. Her aversion to Lord Cleveland was not confined to personal dislike; it was rooted in principle, and incorporated with all her best feelings. She saw at once personified in him, deceit, insolence, and the proud man's contumely: a heart corroded by love of self; a mind that shocked her by its contempt of all that she held most dear, or thought most sacred.

Gentle, generous, and modest herself, could there be any thing of that affinity between them which is the charm of married life? What was worse, could there be any thing that would not be a source of poignant misery? Oh! how different from that divine communion of soul which her fancy had sometimes painted; that mutual inspiration which translates every look into understood language, and every spoken word into kindness and affection!

Her aversion, therefore, was that of refinement to coarseness; of goodness to evil; and but for one thing death seemed preferable to such an alliance. But that one thing detained her long, before she could decide. Her sacrifice of herself might be the salvation of her father; the death of her own happiness, the life of his.

In such a struggle, passed the most unhappy day which Constance had ever yet experienced. She passed it alone, for her father had left her to seek Lord Cleveland, whom he endeavoured to sound on the state of the intention concerning him. Not even the assurance of expected success with his daughter could extract this from the wily earl, who treated him now as a tool, now as an enemy-never as a man who had a right

to his confidence. In truth he had been too often misled to give him the least credit; and except to practise upon his fears, he scarcely noticed him, more than to say he waited the decision, before he could even tell whether he could serve him or not.

Meanwhile, the cause of all this unhappiness in the one nobleman, and of moodiness in the other, found something like support and certainly in that firmness of character which we have attempted to describe; and after tossing in a sea of perplexity, her mind righted in the conclusion, that though she might put a force upon her inclinations, she had no right to sacrifice her principles. On this she built a final resolution to persist in refusing Lord Cleveland; but accompanied it by a determination to dedicate her whole life to the comforting and support of her parent, in every thing else.

Fondly, however, she clung to the hope that he would himself be alive to what pride and his station demanded of him, and rise superior to attacks which he might and ought to despise.

The event was any thing but consonant to the expectations of this natural minded but unhappy lady. Her father, furious from disappointment, was still more so from the recollection how much he had humbled himself to his child, and humbled himself for nothing; while the pure heart of that child was pierced through and through, to think that so dreadful a sacrifice of decorum had been made in a cause so little worthy.

They separated in agony. He, to brood on the degradation he feared he had incurred;-she to lament, in silence, over this unhappy difference, which filled her heart with unextinguishable sorrow.

CHAPTER IX.

FORCED RETIREMENT.

He hath forsook the court,

Broken his staff of office, and dispersed
The household of the king.

What was his reason?

He was not so resolved when last we spake together.

SHAKSPEARE.

WHILE these minor parts were going forward in the drama of ambition, the more principal characters were hastening things to a crisis. Lord Cleveland, finding, spite of ten thousand manœuvres of Clayton's (who was indefatigable in messages between Old and New Windsor,) that his cause with Constance was utterly desperate, resolved to keep no terms with her father, whose office was demanded. Full thirty years' service, as Lord Mowbray called it-or sufference, as Lord Oldcastle designated it-could not preserve him. It became a fashion, indeed, to affect to abandon him. Jests were entertained at his expense, and the decorum of the court was almost disturbed by a very poignant one of Lord Cleveland's, which amused the ears of royalty itself. Some one, it seems, more compassionate than the rest, had ventured to deplore this usage of a man of such an illustrious family.

"Yes!" said Lord Cleveland, "'tis an illustrious family, no doubt; but, like potatoes, the best part of them are under ground."

The shock was too great for the falling earl. After having in vain waited for some compromise, and been apprized of the determination to remove him, he sent in his resignation, to avoid a harder fate. The court air then became absolutely pestilential; and being really and seriously ill, he at length listened to the voice of Constance (who now, all herself, showed nothing but alacrity and cheerfulness,) and resolved to retire from Windsor to Castle Mowbray. He did so, lingeringly,

but decisively, after waiting a fortnight for some consolitory message either from his royal master, or his former colleagues, which he seemed to expect, but which did not come.

It is

It was now that he would have felt, if he could, the consolations of such a creature as his daughter. Her face was ever beaming, ever blooming. Her watchfulness was incessant, but never could her father detect a cloud on her visage, or a tear in her eye. We are not sure that her father himself did not exhibit both. certain that this disappointed man was agitated beyond bearing, as he lost sight of the majestic towers, and primeval oaks of Windsor, in the enjoyment of which he had so often revelled, and, indeed, entirely passed the last two months. It was in vain that Constance talked to him, read to him, or told him her own feelings upon the inanity of the life she had been leading, and the hope of a better, in living more to themselves where they were going.

Lord Mowbray shook his head in silent sorrow. The first day's journey was therefore mournful; and, even on the second, the cheerfulness of Constance was exerted with little better success. The spirit of Lord Mowbray seemed irrecoverably sunk; and in losing, as he fancied, the royal favour (which, however, the royal penetration had been much too just ever to bestow upon him,) he thought his sun was set never to rise again. He became fixed in melancholy; and when the great gates of his own noble castle opened to receive him, they seemed to be the gates of a prison, which were afterwards to close upon him for ever.

And here may we not indulge a lucubration upon the different appearances and effects of retreat, acording to the character of the person retreating, or the causes of his retirement? Many are the Lord Mowbrays of the world-weak in their career; weaker still, when forced to abandon it. But many also, who, from greater abilities, promised better things, have borne their reverses as ill. Cicero whined in banishment, and Olivarez sank under the terrors of a ghost. Bolingbroke, as we have seen, wrote beautifully of philosophy, but belied it in VOL. III.

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