to deplore
your impenetrability? I find it is impossible to agitate that tranquil
bosom with so impetuous a guest as love."

Constantia was offended at the suggestion. "You know," replied she, "I
am engaged to Eustace; and do you think I would marry him if I viewed
him with indifference?"

Monthault observed, that a contract made at a premature age must
originate in indifference, and never could be considered as
indissoluble.

"I consider it so," answered Constantia; "nothing can dissolve it but
death, or some palpable proof of gross unworthiness."

"Suppose," said Monthault, "a more enlarged view of mankind should
discover to you a worthier lover; one whose passion for you is founded
on discriminating preference, not the cold impulse of satiated habit;
one who could give distinction to beauty, and lead it from obscurity
into the splendour it deserves; should such a one sue for the favour of
the divine Constantia:"----

"I would answer, if I aim perfidious to Eustace, I cannot be divine."

"But love is a potent and untameable passion, disdaining the narrow
limitations of preceptive constancy. The acknowledged privilege of
sovereign beauty is to inspire and encourage universal love."

Constance looked offended, and expressed a hope that she might never
possess an empire which could only gratify vanity and pain sincerity.

Monthault found he had gone too far, and tried by badinage to divert her
resentment. "If," said he, "praise is only timeable to your ear when
uttered by one voice, I must not tell you, even if I heard our young
Prince, who is an acknowledged worshipper of beauty, speak in raptures
of the unparalleled loveliness of Dr. Beaumont's daughter."

"No," said she, sternly, "indeed you must not. My humble station
prevents him from saying any thing of my person but, what would be
offensive for me to hear; and I wish not to have the loyal attachment I
feel for my Sovereign's son diminished, by knowing that he indulges in
any improper licence of conversation."

"Nay," replied Monthault, "what he observed was only in reply to one who
is your most devoted slave, predicting that the chains you formed never
could be broken."

"I perceive," answered she, rising to leave the room, "that if I give
you more time for the fabrication you will contrive a very amusing
fiction. I must therefore silence you by saying, that, little as I know
of court-gallantry, he who talks to me in this style, cannot be the
friend