look so, it is the presence of him she loves. Poor Constance loved her cousin timidly; for, painfully conscious of her personal defects, she was shy and retiring. During the lives of her sisters, she had been thrown quite in the background; and her cousin had been the only one from whom she had always received support and consideration. How gratefully does a woman repay such a debt!
Norbourne Courtenaye was the only person with whom Constance was at her ease. During the lifetime of her beautiful sisters, she had met with so many mortifications, that she shrank from all general society; and she had been too secluded, during the last twelvemonth, to know the merits and charms which would inevitably be found in Lord Norbourne's heiress. Of her father she stood in great awe, and of her aunt scarcely less; to which was also added a sense of strangeness. But Norbourne she had known from a child: he had taken her part as a boy, and as a young man had never neglected her; her memory was stored with a thousand slight attentions which he had himself forgotten.
