Subtile and undefinable is that ethereal chord which unites our
tenderest thought, with their chain of association!
Before this conversation, in which Pembroke mentioned the name of
Constantine with so much badinage and apparent familiarity, he never
heard him spoken of by Mary or his aunt without declaring a
displeasure nearly amounting to anger. Hence when she considered his
now so strangely altered tone, Miss Beaufort necessarily concluded
that he had seen, in the person of him she most valued, the man whose
public character she had often heard him admire, and who, she now
doubted not, had at some former period given him some private reason
for calling him his friend. Before this time, she more than once had
suspected, from the opinions which Somerset occasionally repeated
respecting the affairs of Poland, that he could only have acquired so
accurate a knowledge of its events by having visited the country
itself. She mentioned her suspicion to Mr. Loftus: he denied the
fact; and she had thought no more on the subject until the present
ambiguous hints of her cousin conjured up these doubts anew, and led
her to suppose that if Pembroke had not disobeyed his father so far
as to go to Warsaw, he must have met with the Count Sobieski in some
other realm. The possibility that this young hero, of whom fame spoke
so loudly, might be the mysterious Constantine, bewildered and
delighted her.
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