nted with Constantia, who had not then passed her fifteenth.
As he lived but a few miles distant from her father's house, he had
frequent opportunities of seeing her; and, by the advantages of a good
person and a pleasing conversation, made such an impression in her heart
as it was impossible for time to efface. He was himself no less smitten
with Constantia. A long acquaintance made them still discover new
beauties in each other, and by degrees raised in them that mutual passion
which had an influence on their following lives. It unfortunately
happened that, in the midst of this intercourse of love and friendship
between Theodosius and Constantia, there broke out an irreparable quarrel
between their parents; the one valuing himself too much upon his birth,
and the other upon his possessions. The father of Constantia was so
incensed at the father of Theodosius, that he contracted an unreasonable
aversion towards his son, insomuch that he forbade him his house, and
charged his daughter upon her duty never to see him more. In the
meantime, to break off all communication between the two lovers, who he
knew entertained secret hopes of some favourable opportunity that should
bring them together, he found out a young gentleman of a good fortune and
an agreeable person, whom he pitched upon as a husband for his daughter.
He soon concerted this affair so well, that he told Constantia it was his
design to marry her to such a gentleman, and that her wedding should be
celebrated on such a day. Constantia, who was overawed with the
authority of her father, and unable to object anything against so
advantageous a match, received the proposal with a profound silence,
which her father commended in her, as the most decent manner of a
virgin's giving her consent to an overture of that kind. The noise of
this intended marriage soon reached Theodosius, who, after a long tumult
of passions which naturally rise in a lover's heart on such an occasion,
wrote the following letter to Constantia:--

"The thought of my Constantia, which for some years has been my only
happiness, is now become a greater torment to me than I am able to
bear. Must I then live to see you another's? The streams, the
fields, and meadows, where we have so often talked together, grow
painful to me; life itself is become a burden. May you long be happy
in the world, but forget that there was ever such a man in it as

"THEODOSIUS."

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