sing it again?"

"Not to-night, dearest: and yet you may; methinks it is the last night I
shall ever listen to minstrelsy--not but that there is philosophy in
music, for it teaches us to forget care; it is to the ear what perfume
is to the smell. How exquisite is music! the only earthly joy of which
we are assured we shall taste in heaven. Play on."

Lady Frances again sung the lay, but with less spirit than before, for
she felt it was unheeded by her friend, and she laid the lute silently
on the ground when she had finished.

"Do you know," said Constance, after a time, "I pity your waiting lady,
who was married to Jerry White, as you call him, so unceremoniously."

"Pity her!" repeated Lady Frances, with as disdainful a toss of her
head, as if she had always formed a part of the aristocracy. "Pity her!
methinks the maid was well off to obtain the man who aspired to her
mistress."

"But she loved him not," observed Constantia, in a sad voice.

"Poor Jerry!" laughed Lady Frances, "how could she love him; the
Commonwealth jester; wanting only cap, bells, and a hobby-horse, to be
fool, _par excellence_, of the British dominions? And yet he is no fool
either; more knave than fool, though my father caught him at last."

"It was a severe jest," said Constantia.

"Why, it was--but verily I believe my father thought there was danger of
having two fools at his court, instead of one. It was after this
fashion. Jerry presumed a good deal upon the encouragement his Highness
had given him--for the Protector loves a jest as well as any, when there
is nobody by to repeat it to the grave ones: and his chaplain, Jerry
White, chimed in with his humour, and was well-timed in his conceits;
and this so pleased my good father, that he suffered him much in private
about his person. So he fell, or pretended to fall, desperately in love
with my giddy self. It was just at the time, too, when Charles Stuart
made his overtures of marriage, that so caught my mother's fancy; and my
imagination was marvellously moved by two such strings to my bow--a
prince and a preacher--a rogue and a fool:--only think of it,
Constantia! However, Jerry grew much too tender, and I began to think
seriously I was going too far; so I told my sister Mary, and I am sure
she told my father; for, as I was passing through a private anteroom at
Whitehall, his reverence was there in ambush, and commenced his usual
jargon of love and dove, faithfulness and fidelity, g