Age may improve the understanding, but it chills the affections; and
though the young are ever fitter to invent than to judge, and abler for
execution than for counsel; yet, on the other hand, they are happily
free from that knowledge of the world which first intoxicates, and then,
too frequently, leaves its votaries with enfeebled heads and palsied
hands. Had not Walter been schooled in adversity, he would have been as
haughty and as unyielding a cavalier as ever drew sword in the cause of
the unhappy Stuarts; but his boyhood had been passed amid privations,
and they had done the work of wisdom. As in books, so it is in life, we
profit more by the afflictions of the righteous Job, than by the
felicities of the luxurious Solomon. The only break of summer sunshine
in his short but most varied career was the time he had spent with
Constance Cecil; nor had he in the least exaggerated his feelings in
saying that "the memory of the days passed in her society bad been the
soother and brightener of his existence." He sorrowed as much at the
idea that she was sacrificing herself from some mysterious cause, as at
the termination his affection was likely to suffer. That so high souled
a being was about to make such a sacrifice from worldly motives, was, he
knew, impossible; and among the bitterest of his regrets was the one,
that she did not consider him worthy of her confidence.

"I could give her up, almost cheerfully," he would repeat to himself,
"if her happiness depended on it; but I cannot support the idea that she
thinks me undeserving her esteem." As to his arrest, he cared but little
for it: at another time it would have chafed and perplexed him in no
small degree; but Constance--the beloved Constance--the playmate of his
childhood--the vision of his boyhood--the reality of his maturer years,
was alone in his mind. Often did he wish he had not seen her in her
womanly beauty; that he had not spent a day beneath the roof where he
was now a prisoner; that she had been any thing but worthy of the
passionate affection he endeavoured vainly to recall. Had she been less
perfect, he thought he could have been less devoted; and yet he would
not have her other than she was. But for such a one to be the victim of
Sir Willmott Burrell--a traitor! a coward--the thought was
insupportable. After many contending ideas, he came to the resolution
that, cost what it would, he would put the case in all its bearings to
Major Wellmore--anothe