The recital of the preceding scene, which was communicated to Miss
Beaufort by Euphemia, filled her with still more doubting thoughts.

Mary could discover no reason why the old gentleman's mental derangement should dignify his friend with titles he had never borne. She remarked to herself that his answer to Euphemia was evasive; she remembered his emotion and apology on seeing Mr. C. Kemble in Adelbert; and uniting with these facts his manners and acquirements, so far beyond the charges of any subordinate rank, she could finally retain no doubt of his being at least well born.

Thus this mysterious Constantine continued to occupy her hourly thoughts during the space of two months, in which time she had full opportunity to learn much of a character with whom she associated almost every day. At Lady Tinemouth's (one of whose evening guests she frequently became) she beheld him disencumbered of that armor of reserve which he usually wore in Harley Street.

In the circle of the countess, Mary saw him welcomed like an idolized being before whose cheering influence all frowns and clouds must disappear. When he entered, the smile resumed its seat on the languid features of Lady Tinemouth; Miss Egerton's eye lighted up to keener archness; Lady Sara's Circassian orbs floated in pleasure; and for Mary herself, her breast heaved, her cheeks glowed, her hands trembled, a quick sigh fluttered in her bosom; and whilst she remained in his presence, she believed that happiness had lost its usual evanescent property, and become tangible, to hold and press upon her heart.

Mary, who investigated the cause of these tremors on her pillow, bedewed it with delicious though bitter tears, when her alarmed soul whispered that she nourished for this amiable foreigner "a something than friendship dearer."

"Ah! is it come to this?" cried she, pressing down her saturated eyelids with her hand. "Am I at last to love a man who, perhaps, never casts a thought on me? How despicable shall I become in my own eyes!"

The pride of woman puts this charge to her taken heart—that heart which seems tempered of the purest clay, and warmed with the fire of heaven; that tender and disinterested heart asks as its appeal—What is love? Is it not an admiration of all that is beautiful in nature and in the soul? Is it not a union of loveliness with truth? Is it not a passion whose sole object is the rapture of contemplating the supreme beauty of this combined character?

"Where, then," cried the enthusiastic Mary, "where is the shame that can be annexed to my loving Constantine? If it be honorable to love delineated excellence, it must be equally so to love it when embodied in a human shape. Such it is in Constantine; and if love be the reflected light of virtue, I may cease to arraign myself of that which otherwise I would have scorned. Therefore, Constantine," cried she, raising her clasped hands, whilst renewed tears streamed over her face, "I will love thee! I will pray for thy happiness, though its partner should be Euphemia Dundas."

Mary's eager imagination would not allow her to perceive those obstacles in the shapes of pride and prudence, which would stand in the way of his obtaining Euphemia's hand; its light showed to her only a rival in the person of the little beauty; but from her direct confidence she continued to retreat with abhorrence.

Had Euphemia been more deserving of Constantine, Miss Beaufort believed she would have been less reluctant to hear that she loved him. But Mary could not avoid seeing that Miss E. Dundas possessed little to ensure connubial comfort, if mere beauty and accidental flights of good humor were not to be admitted into the scale. She was weak in understanding, timid in principle, absurd in almost every opinion she adopted; and as for love, true, dignified, respectable love, she knew nothing of the sentiment.

Whilst Miss Beaufort meditated on this meagre schedule of her rival's merits, the probability that even such a man as Constantine might sacrifice himself to flattery and to splendor stung her to the soul.

The more she reflected on it, the more she conceived it possible. Euphemia was considered a beauty of the day; her affectation of refined prettiness pleased many, and might charm Constantine: she was mistress of fifty thousand pounds, and did not esteem it necessary to conceal from her favorite the empire he had acquired. Perhaps there was generosity in this openness? If so, what might it not effect on a grateful disposition? or, rather, (her mortified heart murmured in the words of her aunt Dorothy,) "how might it not operate on the mind of one of that sex, which, at the best, is as often moved by caprice as by feeling."

Mary blushed at her adoption of this opinion; and, angry with herself for the injustice which a lurking jealousy had excited in her to apply to Constantine's noble nature, she resolved, whatever might be her struggles, to promote his happiness, though even with Euphemia, to the utmost of her power.

The next morning, when Miss Beaufort saw the study door opened for her entrance, she found Mr. Constantine at his station, literally baited between Miss Dundas and her honorable lover. At such moments Mary appeared the kindest of the kind. She loved to see Constantine smile; and whenever she could produce that effect, by turning the spleen of these polite sneerers against themselves, his smiles, which ever entered her heart, afforded her a banquet for hours after his departure.

Mary drew out her netting, (which was a purse for Lady Tinemouth,) and taking a seat beside Euphemia, united with her to occupy his attention entirely, that he might not catch even one of those insolent glances which were passing between Lascelles and a new visitant the pretty lady Hilliars.

This lady seemed to take extreme pleasure in accosting Thaddeus by the appellation of "Friend," "My good man," "Mr. What's-your-name," and similar squibs of insult, with which the prosperous assail the unfortunate. Such random shots they know often inflict the most galling wounds.

However, "Friend," "My good man," and "Mr. What's-your-name," disappointed this lady's small artillery of effect. He seemed invulnerable both to her insolence and to her affectation; for to be thought a wit, by even Miss Dundas's emigrant tutor, was not to be despised; though at the very moment in which she desired his admiration, she supposed her haughtiness had impressed him with a proper sense of his own meanness and a high conception of her dignity.

She jumped about the room, assumed infantine airs, played with Euphemia's lap-dag, fondled it, seated herself on the floor and swept the carpet with her fine flaxen tresses; but she performed the routine of captivation in vain. Thaddeus recollected having seen this pretty full-grown baby, in her peculiar character of a profligate wife, pawning her own and her husband's property; he remembered this, and the united shafts of her charms and folly fell unnoticed to the ground.

When Thaddeus took his leave, Miss Beaufort, as was her custom, retired for an hour to read in her dressing-room, before she directed her attention to the toilet. She opened a book, and ran over a few pages of Madame de Stael's Treatise on the Passions; but such reasoning was too abstract for her present frame of mind, and she laid the volume down.

She dipped her pen in the inkstand. Being a letter in debt to her guardian, she thought she would defray it now. She accomplished "My dear uncle," and stopped. Whilst she rested on her elbow, and, heedless of what she was doing, picked the feather of her quill to pieces, no other idea offered itself than the figure of Thaddeus sitting 'severe in youthful beauty!' and surrounded by the contumelies with which the unworthy hope to disparage the merit they can neither emulate nor overlook.

Uneasy with herself, she pushed the table away, and, leaning her cheek on her arm, gazed into the rainbow varieties of a beaupot of flowers which occupied the fireplace. Even their gay colors appeared to fade before her sight, and present to her vacant eye the form of Thaddeus, with the melancholy air which shaded his movements. She turned round, but could not disengage herself from the spirit that was within her; his half-suppressed sighs seemed yet to thrill in her ear and weigh upon her heart.

"Incomparable young man!" cried she, starting up, "why art thou so wretched? Oh! Lady Tinemouth, why have you told me of his many virtues? Why have I convinced myself that what you said is true? Oh! why was I formed to love an excellence which I never can approach?"

The natural reply to these self-demanded questions suggesting itself, she assented with a tear to the whisperings of her heart—that when cool, calculating reason would banish the affections, it is incapable of filling their place.

She rang the bell for her maid.

"Marshall, who dines with Lady Dundas to-day?"

"I believe, ma'am," replied the girl, "Mr. Lascelles, Lady Hilliars, and the Marquis of Elesmere."

"I dislike them all three!" cried Mary, with an impatience to which she was little liable; "dress me how you like: I am indifferent to my appearance."

Marshall obeyed the commands of her lady, who, hoping to divert her thoughts, took up the poems of Egerton Brydges. But the attempt only deepened her emotion, for every line in that exquisite little volume "gives a very echo to the seat where love is throned!"

She closed the book and sighed. Marshall having fixed the last pearl comb in her mistress's beautiful hair, and observing that something was wrong that disquieted her, exclaimed, "Dear ma'am, you are so pale to-day! I wish I might put on some gayer ornaments!"

"No," returned Mary, glancing a look at her languid features; "no, Marshall: I appear as well as I desire. Any chance of passing unnoticed in company I dislike is worth retaining. No one will be here this evening whom I care to please."

She was mistaken; other company had been invited besides those whom the maid mentioned. But Miss Beaufort continued from seven o'clock until ten, the period at which the ladies left the table, the annoyed victim of the insipid and pert compliments of Lord Elesmere.

Sick of his subjectless and dragging conversation, she gladly followed Lady Dundas to the drawing-room, where, opening her knitting case, she took her station in a remote corner.

After half an hour had elapsed, the gentlemen from below, recruited by fresh company, thronged in fast; and, notwithstanding it was styled a family party, Miss Beaufort saw many new faces, amongst whom she observed an elderly clergyman, who was looking about for a chair. The yawning Lascelles threw himself along the only vacant sofa, just as the reverend gentleman approached it.

Miss Beaufort immediately rose, and was moving on to another room, when the coxcomb, springing up, begged permission to admire her work; and, without permission, taking it from her, pursued her, twisting the purse around his fingers and talking all the while.

Mary walked forward, smiling with contempt, until they reached the saloon, where the Misses Dundas were closely engaged in conversation with the Marquis of Elesmere.

Lascelles, who trembled for his Golconda at this sight, stepped briskly up. Miss Beaufort, who did not wish to lose sight of her purse whilst in the power of such a Lothario, followed him, and placed herself against the arm of the sofa on which Euphemia sat.

Lascelles now bowed his scented locks to Diana in vain; Lord Elesmere was describing the last heat at Newmarket, and the attention of neither lady could be withdrawn.

The beau became so irritated by the neglect of Euphemia, and so nettled at her sister's overlooking him, that assuming a gay air, he struck Miss Dundas's arm a smart stroke with Miss Beaufort's purse; and laughing, to show the strong opposition between his broad white teeth and the miserable mouth of his lordly rival, hoped to alarm him by his familiarity, and to obtain a triumph over the ladies by degrading them in the eyes of the peer.

"Miss Dundas," demanded he, "who was that quiz of a man in black your sister walked with the other day in Portland Place?"

"Me!" cried Euphemia, surprised.

"Ay!" returned he; "I was crossing from Weymouth Street, when I perceived you accost a strange-looking person—a courier from the moon, perhaps! You may remember you sauntered with him as far as Sir William Miller's. I would have joined you, but seeing the family standing in the balcony, I did not wish them to suppose that I knew anything of such queer company."

"Who was it, Euphemia?" inquired Miss Dundas, in a severe tone.

"I wonder he affects to be ignorant," answered her sister, angrily; "he knows very well it was only Mr. Constantine."

"And who is Mr. Constantine?" demanded the marquis. Mr. Lascelles shrugged his shoulders.

"E'faith, my lord! a fellow whom nobody knows—a teacher of languages, giving himself the airs of a prince—a writer of poetry, and a man who will draw you, your house or dogs, if you will pay him for it."

Mary's heart swelled.

"What, a French emigrant?" drawled his lordship, dropping his lip; "and the lovely Euphemia wishes to soothe his sorrows."

"No, my lord," stammered Euphemia, "he is—he is——"

"What!" interrupted Lascelles, with a malicious grin. "A wandering beggar, who thrusts himself into society which may some day repay his insolence with chastisement! And for the people who encourage him, they had better beware of being themselves driven from all good company. Such confounders of degrees ought to be degraded from the rank they disgrace. I understand his chief protectress is Lady Tinemouth; his second, Lady Sara Ross, who, by way of passant le temps, shows she is not quite inconsolable at the absence of her husband."

Mary, pale and trembling at the scandal his last words insinuated, opened her lips to speak, when Miss Dundas (whose angry eyes darted from her sister to her lover) exclaimed, "Mr. Lascelles, I know not what you mean. The subject you have taken up is below my discussion; yet I must confess, if Euphemia has ever disgraced herself so far as to be seen walking with a schoolmaster, she deserves all you have said."

"And why might I not walk with him, sister?" asked the poor culprit, suddenly recovering from her confusion, and looking pertly up; "who knew that he was not a gentleman?"

"Everybody, ma'am," interrupted Lascelles; "and when a young woman of fashion condescends to be seen equalizing herself with a creature depending on his wits for support, she is very likely to incur the contempt of her acquaintance and the censure of her friends."

"She is, sir," said Mary, holding down her indignant heart and forcing her countenance to appear serene; "for she ought to know that if those men of fashion, who have no wit to be either their support or ornament, did not proscribe talents from their circle, they must soon find 'the greater glory dim the less.'"

"True, madam," cried Lord Berrington, who, having entered during the contest, had stood unobserved until this moment; "and their gold and tinsel would prove but dross and bubble, if struck by the Ithuriel touch of Merit when so advocated."

Mary turned at the sound of his philanthropic voice, and gave him one of those glances which go immediately to the soul.

"Come, Miss Beaufort," cried he, taking her hand; "I see the young musician yonder who has so recently astonished the public. I believe he is going to sing. Let us leave this discordant corner, and seek harmony by his side."

Mary gladly acceded to his request, and seating herself a few paces from the musical party, Berrington took his station behind her chair.

When the last melting notes of "From shades of night" died upon her ear, Mary's eyes, full of admiration and transport, which the power of association rendered more intense, remained fixed on the singer. Lord Berrington smiled at the vivid expression of her countenance, and as the young Orpheus moved from the instrument, exclaimed, "Come, Miss Beaufort, I won't allow you quite to fancy Braham the god on whom

Enamored Clitie turned and gazed!

[Footnote: This accomplished singer and composer still lives—one of the most admired ornaments of the British orchestra.—1845.]

Listen a little to my merits. Do you know that if it were not for my timely lectures, Lascelles would grow the most insufferable gossip about town? There is not a match nor a divorce near St. James's of which he cannot repeat all the whys and wherefores. I call him Sir Benjamin Backbite; and I believe he hates me worse than Asmodeus himself."

"Such a man's dislike," rejoined Mary, "is the highest encomium he can bestow. I never yet heard him speak well of any person who did not resemble himself."

"And he is not consistent even there," resumed the viscount: "I am not sure I have always heard him speak in the gentlest terms of Miss Dundas. Yet, on that I cannot quite blame him; for, on my honor, she provokes me beyond any woman breathing."

"Many women," replied Mary, smiling, "would esteem that a flattering instance of power."

"And, like everything that flatters," returned he, "it would tell a falsehood. A shrew can provoke a man who detests her. As to Miss Dundas, notwithstanding her parade of learning, she generally espouses the wrong side of the argument; and I may say with somebody, whose name I have forgotten, that any one who knows Diana Dundas never need be at a loss for a woman to call impertinent."

"You are not usually so severe, my lord!"

"I am not usually so sincere, Miss Beaufort," answered he; "but I see you think for yourself, therefore I make no hesitation in speaking what I think—to you."

His auditor bowed her head sportively but modestly. Lady Dundas at that moment beckoned him across the room. She compelled him to sit down to whist. He cast a rueful glance at Mary, and took a seat opposite to his costly partner.

"Lord Berrington is a very worthy young man," observed the clergyman to whom at the beginning of the evening Miss Beaufort had resigned her chair; "I presume, madam, you have been honoring him with your conversation?"

"Yes," returned Mary, noticing the benign countenance of the speaker; "I have not had the pleasure of long knowing his lordship, but what I have seen of his character is highly to his advantage."

"I was intimate in his father's house for years," rejoined the gentleman: "I knew this young nobleman from a boy. If he has faults, he owes them to his mother, who doated on him, and rather directed his care to the adornment of his really handsome person than to the cultivation of talents he has since learned to appreciate."

"I believe Lord Berrington to be very sensible, and, above all, very humane," returned Miss Beaufort.

"He is so," replied the old gentleman; "yet it was not till he had attained the age of twenty-two that he appeared to know he had anything to do in the world besides dressing and attending on the fair sex. His taste produced the first, whilst the urbanity of his disposition gave birth to the latter. When Berrington arrived at his title, he was about five-and-twenty. Sorrow for the death of his amiable parents, who died in the same month, afforded him leisure to find his reason. He discovered that he had been acting a part beneath him, and he soon implanted on the good old stock those excellent acquirements which you see he possesses. In spite of his regeneration," continued the clergyman, casting a good-humored glance on the dove-colored suit of the viscount, "you perceive that first impressions will remain. He loves dress, but he loves justice and philanthropy better."

"This eulogy, sir," said Mary, "affords me real pleasure, may I know the name of the gentleman with whom I have the honor to converse?"

"My name is Blackmore," returned he.

"Dr. Blackmore?"

"The same."

He was the same Dr. Blackmore who had been struck by the appearance of the Count Sobieski at the Hummums, but had never learned his name, and who, being a rare visitor at Lady Dundas's, had never by chance met a second time with the object of his compassion.

"I am happy," resumed Miss Beaufort, "in having the good fortune to meet a clergyman of whom I have so frequently heard my guardian, Sir Robert Somerset, speak with the highest esteem."

"Ah!" replied he, "I have not seen him since the death of his lady; I hope that he and his son are well!"

"Both are perfectly so now," returned she, "and are together in the country!"

"You, madam, I suppose are my lady's niece, the daughter of the brave
Admiral Beaufort?"

"I am, sir."

"Well, I rejoice at this incident," rejoined he, pressing her hand; "I knew your mother when she was a lovely girl. She used to spend her summers with the late Lady Somerset, at the castle. It was there I had the honor of cultivating her friendship."

"I do not remember ever having seen my mother," replied the now thoughtful Mary. Dr. Blackmore observing the expression of her countenance, smiled kindly, and said, "I fear I am to blame here. This is a somewhat sad way of introducing myself. But your goodness must pardon me," continued he; "for I have so long accustomed myself to speak what I think to those in whom I see cause to esteem, that sometimes, as now, I undesignedly inflict pain."

"Not in this case," returned Miss Beaufort. "I am always pleased when listening to a friend of my mother, and particularly so when he speaks in her praise."

The breaking up of the card-tables prevented further conversation. Lord Berrington again approached the sofa where Mary sat, exclaiming, as he perceived her companion, "Ah my good doctor; have you presented yourself at this fair shrine I declare you eccentric folk may dare anything. Whilst you are free, Miss Beaufort," added he turning to her, "adopt the advice which a good lady once gave me, and which I have implicitly followed: 'When you are young, get the character of an oddity, and it seats you in an easy chair for life.'"

Mary was interrupted in her reply by a general stir amongst the company, who, now the cards were over, like bees and wasps were swarming about the room, gathering honey or stinging as they went.

At once the house was cleared; and Miss Beaufort threw herself on the pillow, to think, and then to dream of Thaddeus.