ture guardian. Though every eye was on her, she did not blush; though the queens of the London world were round her, her gait and air were more royal than all. Every one present experienced a revulsion of feeling. They were prepared for pity; this was no case in which pity could be given. Even the words of protection died on Lady Erpingham's lip, and she it Iwas who felt bashful and disconcerted.

I intend to pass rapidly over the years that elapsed till Constance became a woman. Let us glance at her education. Vernon had not only had her instructed in the French and Italian, but, a deep and impassioned scholar himself, he had taught her the elements of the two great languages of the ancient world. The treasures of those languages she afterward conquered of her own accord.

Lady Erpingham had one daughter, who married when Constance had reached the age of sixteen. The advantages Lady Eleanor Erpingham possessed in her masters and her governess, Constance shared. Miss Vernon drew well and sang divinely, but she made no very great proficiency in the science of music. To say truth, her mind was somewhat too stern, and somewhat too intent on other subjects, to surrender to that most jealous of accomplishments the exclusive devotion it requires.

But of all her attractions, and of all the evidences of her cultivated mind, none equalled the extraordinary grace of her conversation. Wholly disregarding the conventional leading-strings in which the minds of young ladies are accustomed to be held-leadingstrings disguised by the name of "proper diffidence" and" becoming modesty"-she never scrupled to share, nay, to lead, discussions even of a grave and solid nature. Still less did she scruple to invest the common trifles that make the sum of conversation with the fascinations of a wit, which, playful yet deep, rivalled even the paternal source from which it was inherited.

It seems sometimes odd enough to me, that, while young ladies are so sedulously taught all the accom

plishments that a husband disregards, they are never taught the great one he would prize. They are taught to be exhibitors; he wants a companion. He wants neither a singing animal, nor a drawing animal, nor a dancing animal; he wants a talking animal. But to talk they are never taught; all they know of it is slander, and that "comes by nature."

But Constance did talk beautifully: not like a pedant, or a blue, or a Frenchwoman. A child would have been as much charmed with her as a savant; but both would have been charmed. Her father's eloquence had descended to her; but in him eloquence commanded, in her it won. There was another trait she possessed in common with her father: Vernon (as most disappointed men are wont) had done the world injustice by his accusations. It was not his poverty and his distresses alone which had induced his party to look coolly on his declining day. They were not without some apparent excuse for desertion: they doubted his sincerity. It is true that it was without actual cause. No modern politician had ever been more consistent. He had refused bribes, though poor; and place, though ambitious. But he was essentially -here is the secret-essentially an intriguant. Bred in the old school of policy, he thought manoeuvring wisdom, and duplicity the art of governing. Like Lysander, he loved plotting, yet neglected self-interest. There was not a man less open or more honest. This character, so rare in all countries, is especially so in England. Your blunt squires, your politicians at Bellamy's, do not comprehend it. They saw in Vernon the arts which deceive enemies, and they dreaded lest, though his friends, they themselves should be deceived. This disposition, so fatal to Vernon, his daughter inherited. With a dark, bold, and passionate genius, that in a man would have led to the highest enterprises, she linked the feminine love of secrecy and scheming. To borrow again from Plutarch and Lysander, " When the skin of the lion fell short, she was quite of opinion that it should be eked out with the fox's."

*

*Plutarch's "Life of Lysander."

CHAPTER III.

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THE HERO INTRODUCED TO OUR READER'S NOTICE.DIALOGUE BETWEEN HIMSELF AND HIS FATHER. PERCY GODOLPHIN'S CHARACTER AS A BOY.-THE CATASTROPHE OF HIS SCHOOL LIFE.

"PERCY, remember that it is to-morrow you will return to school," said Mr. Godolphin to his only son. Percy pouted, and, after a momentary silence, replied, "No, father, I think I shall go to Mr. Saville's. He has asked me to spend a month with him; and he says rightly that I shall learn more with him than at Dr. Shallowell's, where I am already head of the sixth form."

"Mr. Saville is a coxcomb, and you are another!" replied the father, who, dressed in an old flannel dressing-gown, with a worn velvet cap on his head, and cowering gloomily over a wretched fire, seemed no bad personification of that mixture of half-hypochondriac, half-miser, which he was in reality. "Don't talk to me of going to town, sir, or—”

"Father," interrupted Percy, in a cool and nonchalant tone, as he folded his arms and looked straight and shrewdly on the paternal face, "father, let us understand each other. My schooling, I suppose, is rather an expensive affair?"

"You may well say that, sir! Expensive!—it is frightful, horrible, ruinous! Expensive! Twenty pounds a year, board and Latin; five guineas washing; five more writing and arithmetic. Sir, if I were not resolved that you should not want education, though you may want fortune, I should—yes, I should-What do you mean, sir?-you are laughing! Is this your respect, your gratitude to your father?"

A slight shade fell over the bright and intelligent countenance of the boy.

"Don't let us talk of gratitude," said he, sadly; "God knows what either you or I have to be grateful for! Fortune has left to your proud name but these bare walls and a handful of barren acres; to me she gave a father's affection-not such as Nature had made it, but cramped and soured by misfortunes.'

Here Percy paused, and his father seemed also struck and affected. "Let us," renewed, in a lighter strain, this singular boy, who might have passed, by some months, his fifteenth year, "let us see if we cannot accommodate matters to our mutual satisfaction. You can ill afford my schooling, and I am resolved that at school I will not stay. Saville is a relation of ours; he has taken a fancy to me; he has even hinted that he may leave me his fortune; and he has promised, at least, to afford me a home and his tuition as long as I like. Give me free passport hereafter to come and go as I list, and I in turn will engage never to cost you another shilling. Come, sir, shall it be a compact?" "You wound me, Percy," said the father, with a mournful pride in his tone: "I have not deserved this, at least from you. You know not, boy-you know not all that has hardened this heart; but to you it has not been hard; and a taunt from you-yes, that is the serpent's tooth!"

Percy in an instant was at his father's feet; he seized both his hands, and burst into a passionate fit of tears. "Forgive me," he said, in broken words; "I -I meant not to taunt you. I am but a giddy boy! send me to school! do with me as you will!"

"Ay," said the old man, shaking his head gently, "you know not what pain a son's bitter word can send to a parent's heart. But it is all natural, perfectly natural! You would reproach me with a love of money; it is the sin youth is least lenient to. But what! can I look round the world, and not see its value, its necessity? Year after year, from my first manhood, I have toiled and toiled to preserve from the hammer these last remnants of my ancestors' domains. Year after year fortune has slipped from my grasp; and, after all

my efforts, and towards the close of a long life, I stand on the very verge of penury. But you cannot tell-no man whose heart is not seamed with many years can tell, or can appreciate the motives that have formed my character. You, however"-and his voice softened as he laid his hand on his son's head-“ you, however the gay, the bold, the young-should not have your brow crossed and your eye dimmed by the cares that surround me. Go! I will accompany you to towh; I will see Saville myself. If he be one with whom my son can, at so tender an age, be safely trust ed, you shall pay him the visit you wish."

Percy would have replied, but his father checked him; and, before the end of the evening, the father had resolved to forget as much as he pleased of the conversation.

The elder Godolphin was one of those characters on whom it is vain to attempt making a permanent impression. The habits of his mind were durably formed: like waters, they yielded to any sudden intrusion, but closed instantly again. Early in life he had been taught that he ought to marry an heiress for the benefit of his estate-his ancestral estate; the restoration of which he had been bred to consider the grand object and ambition of life. His views had been strangely baffled; but, the more they were thwarted, the more pertinaciously he clung to them. Naturally kind, generous, and social, he had sunk at length into the anchorite and the miser. All other speculations that should retrieve his ancestral honours had failed: but there is one speculation that never fails-the speculation of saving! It was to this that he now indissolubly attached himself. At moments he was open to all his old habits, but those moments were rare and few. A cold, hard, frosty penuriousness was his prevalent characteristic. He had sent his son, with eighteen pence in his pocket, to a school of twenty pounds a year, where, naturally enough, he learned nothing but mischief and cricket; yet he conceived that his son owed him eternal obligations.