The scene changes to an apartment of a very different style. We enter the house of the chancellor; but it is not the chancellor himself who is first presented to our view. In an antique Gothic chamber, in the decoration and structure of which the most costly material had been studiously united with the severest simplicity of taste, sat Maria, the only daughter and child of Count Laski. She sat at her embroidery. The embroidery, however, had fallen upon her lap; she leaned back, resigned to her meditations, in a massive arm-chair covered with purple velvet, which it is impossible not to think must have felt something like pride and pleasure as her slight and lovely form sank into it. It was a long reverie.

In an angle of this lofty room, at some distance, but not out of the range of clear vision, stood, motionless as a statue, the slave Hakem. His arms were folded on his breast, his eye rested, without, as it seemed, a power to withdraw it, on the beautiful figure of the young girl before him. It was one of those long intense looks which show that the person on whom it is fixed is still more the object of meditation than of vision—where it is the soul that looks. Hakem gazed like a devotee upon the sacred image of his saint.

Maria, quite unconscious of this gaze, pursued her meditations. Her eye caught the hour-glass that stood on a small table beside her. "Sand after sand," said she, musing to herself—"Sand after sand, thought after thought. The same sand ever trickling there; the same thought ever coursing through my mind. Oh, love! love! They say it enlarges the heart; I think it contracts it to a single point."

"Hakem," she said, after a pause, and turning towards the slave, "you are true to my father, will you be true also to me?"

"To her father!" he murmured to himself, "as if"——And then, checking himself and speaking aloud, he answered—"The Christians are not so true to your sweet namesake, the Holy Virgin, whom they adore, as I will be to you."

"A simple promise will suffice," said Maria. "You have, Hakem—let me say it without offence—a style of language—Eastern, I suppose—hyperbolical—which either I must learn to pardon, or you must labour to reform. It does not suit our northern clime."

"I am mute. Yet, lady, you have sometimes chid me for my long silence."

"And is it for your much speaking that I chide you now?" said the maiden, with a smile. "You will stand half the day like a statue there; and, when spoken to, answer with a gesture only—so that many have thought you really dumb. Much speaking is certainly not thy fault."

"I understand. The slave speaks as one who felt the indescribable charm of thy presence. It is a presumption worthy of death. Shall I inflict the punishment?"

"Is this amendment of thy fault, good Hakem, or repetition of it?"

"I await your commands. What service can Hakem render?"

But Maria relapsed again into silence. She seemed to hesitate in making the communication she had designed. Meantime, the arrival of her father was announced, and the slave left the apartment.

Never man felt more tender love for his daughter than did the proud, high-minded minister for this his beautiful Maria. His demeanour towards her, from childhood upwards, had been one of unalterable, uninterrupted fondness. He knew no other mood, no other tone, in which he could have addressed her. Did the grave chancellor, then—some one, who in his way, also, is very grave, may ask—did he, by constant fondness, spoil his child? No. It is the fondness which is not constant that spoils. It is the half-love of weak and irritable natures, who are themselves children amongst their children, who can themselves be petulant, selfish, and capricious—it is this that mars a temper. But calm and unalterable love—oh, believe it not that such ever spoilt a child! Maria grew up under the eye of affection, and the ever-open hand of paternal love; and she herself seemed to have learned no other impulses but those of affection and generosity.

Alas for fathers! when the child grows into the budding woman, and by her soft, intelligent companionship fills the house with gladness, and the heart with inappreciable content, then comes the gay, permitted spoiler—comes the lover with his suit—his honourable suit—and robs them of their treasure. The world feels only with the lover—with the youth, and the fair maiden that he wins. For the bereaved parent, not a thought! No one heeds the sigh that breaks from him, as, amidst festivities and mirth, and congratulatory acclamations, he sees his daughter, with all her prized affections, borne off from him, in triumph, for ever.

There was, on this occasion, in the manner of Laski towards his child, an evident sadness. It was not that the political horizon was darkening; he had never permitted that to throw its gloom over his companionship with his daughter. It was because he had grounds to believe that the events which threatened the tranquillity of Poland threatened also the peace of his daughter, whose affections he had divined were no longer exclusively his own.

She, observing his emotion, and attributing it to some untoward event in the political world, could not refrain from expressing the wish that he would quit the harassing affairs of state, and live wholly in his home.

"I would long since have done so," he replied, "if personal happiness had been the sole aim of my existence. But I have a taskwork to accomplish—one, I think, which God, by fitting me thereto, has pointed out as mine. Else it is indeed here, with thee beside me, that I find all that can bear the name of happiness. The rest of life is but sternest duty—strife, hostility, contempt. But away with this gloomy talk—what gossip is there stirring in your idle world, Maria?"

"Pray, is there war forward?"

"I hope not. Why do you ask?"

"A maid of mine, who in the city gathers news as busily as bees, in the open fields, their honey"——

"Your simile, I fear, would scarce hold good as to the honey."

"No, in faith; and there is no honey in the news she brings. She tells me that a camp is forming in the frontiers between Poland and Lithuania, and that Augustus Glinski is sent there to command the troops. Is this true?"

"It is; and she might have added that the duke himself secretly left the city last night, to place himself at their head."

"Is it a dangerous service?"

"The service on which the duke has entered, and into which he misleads his son, is dangerous. You tremble, Maria. It was no maiden, nor the tattle of the town, that brought you this. When did you last see or hear from him—from Augustus Glinski?"

"Believe me," said Maria, while a crimson blush suddenly spread over her countenance, "if I have concealed any thing from you, it was not from craft, nor subtlety, nor fear, but from"——

"From a mere delicacy, a simple bashfulness," said the father, coming to her assistance. "I know it well. Had you a mother living, I would bid you confide these sentiments of your heart to her, and to her only; but, having no other parent, make me your confidant. Trust me, you shall not find a woman's heart more open to your griefs, your fears, your joys, than mine shall be. Make me your sole confidant—you love this young Augustus?"

"When I was at my aunt's we met each other often—but to you, my father, I have ever referred him as our final arbiter. I need not say that the known political rivalry between his father and yourself has made him backward in addressing you."

"All men speak well of Augustus Glinski. I blame you not, my child; I only tremble for you. The duke, his father, is a restless, bold ambitious man, who will lead him—honourable as he is, but too young to judge, or to resist his parent—into treasonable enterprises. Both father and son—if they will play the rebel, and bring down war on Poland—I stand prepared to meet. The sword of justice shall sweep them from the earth. But if thy heart, my child, is doomed to bleed in this encounter, the wound will not be more yours than mine. There shall be no secrets between us. I will protect thee all I can; and if I cannot prevent thy sorrows, I will at least share them."

A low tap was here heard at the door, and a page made his appearance. On seeing the minister, the stripling was about to retire. Maria, however, called him in, and bade him deliver his message. "You come," she said to the youth, who still hesitated to speak—"you come from the younger Glinski: speak openly—what is it he has commissioned you to say?"

"This, my lady," answered the page, "that he has ridden in all haste from the camp—that he must quit the city again before nightfall, and craves an audience if only for one minute."

Maria looked towards her father, and thus referred the answer to him.

Count Laski was silent.

"Will you not," said his daughter, "tell this messenger, whether his master may come here or not?"

"My child, he cannot! he is at this moment under my arrest. Return, sir page," and he motioned him from the room—"but return to the fortress of ----; you will find your master there a prisoner, under charge of high treason."

"Oh, spare him! spare him!" cried Maria, as she sank back almost senseless with terror and alarm.

"My child! my child!" exclaimed the minister in heart-breaking anguish, as he bent over his weeping daughter.