er the mantelpiece of her favourite room, hung that
picture of her father which I have before described; it had been long
since removed from Wendover Castle to London, for Constance wished it to
be frequently in her sight. "Alas!" thought she, gazing upon the proud
and animated brow that bent down upon her; "Alas! though in a different
sphere, thy lot, my father, has been mine;--toil unrepaid, affection
slighted, sacrifices forgotten;--a harder lot in part; for thou hadst,
at least, in thy stirring and magnificent career, continued excitement
and perpetual triumph. But I, a woman, shut out by my sex from contest,
from victory, am left only the thankless task to devise the rewards
which others are to enjoy; the petty plot, the poor intrigue, the toil
without the honour, the humiliation without the revenge;--yet have I
worked in thy cause, my father, and thou--thou, couldst thou see my
heart, wouldst pity and approve me."

As Constance turned away her eyes, they fell on the opposite mirror,
which reflected her still lofty but dimmed and faded beauty; the worn
cheek, the dejected eye, those lines and hollows which tell the
progress of years! There are certain moments when the time we have been
forgetting makes its march suddenly apparent to our own eyes; when the
change we have hitherto marked not stares upon us rude and abrupt; we
almost fancy those lines, these wrinkles, planted in a single hour so
unperceived have they been before. And such a moment was this to
the beautiful Constance: she started at her own likeness, and turned
involuntarily from the unflattering mirror. Beside it, on her table,
lay a locket, given her by Godolphin just before they married, and
containing his hair; it was a simple trifle, and the simplicity
seemed yet more striking amidst the costly and modern jewels that were
scattered round it. As she looked on it, her heart, all woman still,
flew back to the day on which, whispering eternal love, he hung it round
her neck. "Ah, happy days! would that they could return!" sighed the
desolate schemer; and she took the locket, kissed it, and softened by
all the numberless recollections of the past, wept silently over it.
"And yet," she said, after a pause, and wiping away her tears, "and yet
this weakness is unworthy of me. Lone, sad, ill, broken in frame and
spirit as I am, he comes not near me; I am nothing to him, nothing to
any one in the wide world. My heart, my heart, reconcile thyself to thy
fate