tility. Sedley remembered his mother a court-beauty, the favourite
of the Queen, and the glass which reflected the smiles and frowns of
royalty. He afterwards saw her the idol of the party which opposed
government, sung by Waller, flattered by Holland, presiding with all the
frivolity and pride of a pretty trifler at the dark divan, while Pym and
St. John disclosed their hopes of extending their aggressions to seizing
the remaining prerogatives of the alarmed and conceding King. Weak,
vain, passionate, and unprincipled, with no determined object but her
own aggrandizement--no claim to attention but an attractive person and
soft courtliness of manner (which polished insincerity often assumes to
disguise a stubborn, wayward, ungoverned temper),--Lady Bellingham
supplied by a shew of benevolence her total want of the reality. He had
seen her, without even the affectation of compassion, listen to a detail
of the measures which were intended to drag Lord Strafford to the block;
and though she boasted of that nobleman as her earliest lover, she made
no attempt to procure him the respite for which his afflicted master
ineffectually solicited. No storm of public calamity, no sympathizing
pity for murdered friends, no sentiment of gratitude for her royal
benefactors, ever disturbed the suavity of Lady Bellingham's deportment.
Nothing could interrupt the dead calm of her unfeeling heart but
opposition to her will, or the apprehension of danger to her effects or
person. In the former case the gentle beauty was loud and pertinacious;
in the latter, terrified to the extreme, and clamorous in her
complaints; in both, perfectly regardless of the means she employed to
promote her purposes, or insure her safety.

Sedley had long discovered a guarded circumspection in his father's
conduct, which, as it exceeded prudence, must be called timidity. His
perplexed look and restless manner spoke a soul ill at ease with itself,
and more suspicious of persons, and the motives of their actions, than
was consistent with fortitude and integrity. From the period of his
assuming the title of Bellingham, Sedley could date a gradual increase
of domestic misery. Even in his childhood he had been obliged to
interfere in the disputes of his parents, each complaining to him of the
faults of the other, and of their own injuries. The Earl ever spake of
the sacrifices he had made to oblige his wife; the Countess, of the
title, fortune, and importance she had b