"
"You are too young, dear Constantine, (for I am still to call you by
that name,) to despair of happiness being yet reserved for you."
"No, my dear Lady Tinemouth, I do not cheat myself with such hope; I
am not so importunate with the gracious Being who gave me life and
reason. He bestowed upon me for awhile the tenderest connections--
friends, rank, honors, glory. All these were crushed in the fall of
Poland; yet I survive, I sought resignation only, and I have found
it. It cost me many a struggle; but the contest was due to the
decrees of that all-wise Creator who gave my first years to
happiness."
"Inestimable young man!" cried the countess, wiping the flowing tears
from her eyes; "you teach misfortune dignity! Not when all Warsaw
rose in a body to thank you, not when the king received you in the
senate with open arms, could you have appeared to me so worthy of
admiration as at this moment, when, conscious of having been all
this, you submit to the direct reverse, because you believe it to be
the will of your Maker! Ah! little does Miss Beaufort think, when
seated by your side, that she is conversing with the youthful hero
whom she has so often wished to see!"
"Miss Beaufort!" echoed Thaddeus, his heart glowing with delight. "Do
you think she ever heard of me by the name of Sobieski?"
"Who has not?" returned the countess; "every heart that could be
interested by heroic virtue has heard and well remembers its glorious
struggles against the calamities of your country.
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