blame me; I knew it not. I thought, oh, vain folly! that it was me he loved. Why else did he marry me? But I feel now, oh, how bitterly! that I was not worthy of him. I, without beauty, grace—with nothing but a heart, whose deep love he will never know!"
She hid her face in her hands; the hysterical passion of tears, long subdued, now burst forth, and she wept bitterly, while Henrietta exhausted every effort to soothe her.
"You pity me!" at last exclaimed Constance; "will you not then leave to me the little that my unwearied affection may gain of his heart? You, so beautiful, so flattered, cannot know what it is not to have a hope or a fear but what is bound up in one beloved object! Tell me," and she knelt at Henrietta's feet, "that you will not seek to win him again from me?"
"There is some strange mistake here," said Lady Marchmont, deeply touched at the emotion she witnessed: "you speak as if some affection existed between Mr. Courtenaye and myself; I am sure that we are equally ignorant
