far;
Then, courts and camps, glory and wealth farewell!
All-powerful love hath broke ambition's spell,
And freed a captive from his iron car.

Ruminating on these lines, and recollecting the mild dutiful behaviour
of Constantia, she could not help supposing that melancholy beauty to be
the object of her son's attachment. She had sufficiently interested her
to inquire the reason of her mournful appearance, and learned that she
had lost her lover in the civil wars. Could that lover have been her
son? Could the figures she had seen sitting among the ruins, and which
she was persuaded were not human, be sent as supernatural omens to
indicate Sedley's death. It was happy for her unsettling reason, that at
the moment when this terrific thought shot across her brain, she
recollected, whatever her early misdemeanors might have been, she was
now in a safe state, and had wiped off all offences to her brother, even
supposing any had been committed. Yet she grew uneasy to hear of her
son, and wished she had been more particular in her inquiries as to the
certainty of his being in Ireland. I have already stated that maternal
affection had no part in her character. The manner in which she treated
Arthur prevented frequent intercourse. Hearing that a Colonel Sedley was
distinguished by his cruelty to the Catholics at the taking of Fredagh
and Drogheda, she had trusted that it was her son now become warm in the
good cause to which she had devoted him. The date of this poem shewed
that he was in Lancashire, indulging very different sentiments at the
time of those bloody victories, and it was her perplexity on this point
which made her give Morgan an affable reception.

She soon discovered, that though he had lately forborn persecuting the
Beaumonts, he retained the most inveterate enmity to the whole family.
She drew from him all the information it was in his power to give
respecting her son's residence at Ribblesdale; the assistance he
received from the Beaumonts when at the point of death, and his sudden
disappearance. Morgan was unacquainted with his change of sentiments and
attachment to Isabel, who, having been long secreted with her father,
was believed to be dead, and had been too insignificant and humble to
draw the attention of so important a personage as Morgan. His
communications confirmed Lady Bellingham in the belief that she had seen
an apparition of her brother, indicative of her son's death, and that
Cons