"I would answer, if I aim perfidious to Eustace, I cannot be divine."
"But love is a potent and untameable passion, disdaining the narrow limitations of preceptive constancy. The acknowledged privilege of sovereign beauty is to inspire and encourage universal love."
Constance looked offended, and expressed a hope that she might never possess an empire which could only gratify vanity and pain sincerity.
Monthault found he had gone too far, and tried by badinage to divert her resentment. "If," said he, "praise is only timeable to your ear when uttered by one voice, I must not tell you, even if I heard our young Prince, who is an acknowledged worshipper of beauty, speak in raptures of the unparalleled loveliness of Dr. Beaumont's daughter."
"No," said she, sternly, "indeed you must not. My humble station prevents him from saying any thing of my person but, what would be offensive for me to hear; and I wish not to have the loyal attachment I feel for my Sovereign's son diminished, by knowing that he indulges in any improper licence of conversation."
"Nay," replied Monthault, "what he observed was only in reply to one who is your most devoted slave, predicting that the chains you formed never could be broken."
"I perceive," answered she, rising to leave the room, "that if I give you more time for the fabrication you will contrive a very amusing fiction. I must therefore silence you by saying, that, little as I know of court-gallantry, he who talks to me in this style, cannot be the friend of Eustace."
Monthault flew into heroics, and struggled to detain her. "Cruel Constantia," said he, "know you not that love is an involuntary passion which reason vainly tries to subdue? Cannot you, who see the conflict in my soul, pity me without doubting my friendship or my honour?"
"I confess I do doubt both," was her reply; "but provided you no more offend me with such language, I will not mention my suspicions to Eustace. I am, 'tis true, a simple girl, yet not so weak as to value myself on an extrinsic appendage which, if I possess, I share with the butterfly. If beauty renders me more amiable in the eyes of those I love, it is a welcome endowment; but I never will patiently hear it commended at the expence of any better quality."
It is probable that, after this repulse, Monthault would never more have thought of Constance if some other pursuit had intervened. But, in the leisure of suspended warfare, a vacant understanding and depraved appetite sees no resource from ennui but gallantry. He had tried flattery; but it failed to excite vanity, or to lead his intended prey into the toils of ambition. He resolved to pursue another scheme, by which he hoped that beauty might be separated from its plighted love.