And filial piety divinely fair?
And bloom such graces in this narrow dell,
Bosom'd in hills, from civil discord 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 Constantia, who mourned a widowed love, had been the object of his ill-placed affections.
Full of apprehension, destitute alike of delicacy, gratitude, and candour, and disposed, from her political feelings, to ascribe every bad passion and action to the royalists, a thought struck her that poverty might have tempted the old delinquent to murder her son; and the suspicion grew to certainty, when the most minute inquiries could give no information of him subsequent to his receiving a large remittance from his tenants the week before he was last seen at Ribblesdale. Her humble attendants, on hearing her opinion, protested that nothing was ever more probable. The chaplain expatiated on the vices of the episcopal clergy, and cited the words of that-then-popular writer, Martin Mar-prelate, to prove them guilty of the greatest offences, not excepting even theft and murder. The gentleman-usher found damning proofs of extreme poverty in all the arrangements of the Beaumonts, and the waiting-gentlewoman could no otherwise account for the deep melancholy of Constantia, than by supposing her lover had been murdered by her father, whose pale care-worn features bore, in her opinion, the character of an assassin.
Having wrought her mind to this conclusion, Lady Bellingham sent again for her confidant Morgan, who, beside his aversion to one whom he had long felt to be a troublesome neighbour, had now particular reasons for appearing zealously inclined to serve the Protector and his friends. He advised Lady Bellingham to state the loss of her son to His Highness, and procure his order for the Doctor's arrest, adding, that even if innocent of this accusation, the imprisonment of one, who as an irreclaimable royalist, deserved punishment, was no breach of justice. He assured Her Ladyship, that her son's long residence in a disaffected family, had not occasioned the smallest change in his opinions, but that he showed his zeal for the good old cause, by informing him of all the proceedings and councils of the delinquents that came to his knowledge; and he feared, as he was missing a little time before Charles Stewart's attempt on Scotland, his having penetrated into that design precipitated their bloody purposes. His communications shaped the fluctuating purposes of Lady Bellingham into a most determinate and diabolical resolve, and she returned to London with the heart of an "Atè hot from hell," and the aspect of a Niobe.