of his union with a widow led him to be for the moment oblivious of the minor shades of good taste.  He desired Mrs. Mountstuart to contradict the story in positive terms.  He repeated his desire; he was urgent to have it contradicted, and said again, “A widow!” straightening his whole figure to the erectness of the letter I. She was a widow unmarried a second time, and it has been known of the stedfast women who retain the name of their first husband, or do not hamper his title with a little new squire at their skirts, that they can partially approve the objections indicated by Sir Willoughby.  They are thinking of themselves when they do so, and they will rarely say, “I might have married;” rarely within them will they avow that, with their permission, it might have been.  They can catch an idea of a gentleman’s view of the widow’s cap.  But a niceness that could feel sharply wounded by the simple rumour of his alliance with the young relict of an earl was mystifying.  Sir Willoughby unbent.  His military letter I took a careless glance at itself lounging idly and proudly at ease in the glass of his mind, decked with a wanton wreath, as he dropped a hint, generously vague, just to show the origin of the rumour, and the excellent basis it had for not being credited.  He was chidden.  Mrs. Mountstuart read him a lecture.  She was however able to contradict the tale of the young countess.  “There is no fear of his marrying her, my dears.”

Meanwhile there was a fear that he would lose his chance of marrying the beautiful Miss Durham.

The dilemmas of little princes are often grave.  They should be dwelt on now and then for an example to poor struggling commoners, of the slings and arrows assailing fortune’s most favoured men, that we may preach contentment to the wretch who cannot muster wherewithal to marry a wife, or has done it and trots the streets, pack-laden, to maintain the dame and troops of children painfully reared to fill subordinate stations.  According to our reading, a moral is always welcome in a moral country, and especially so when silly envy is to be chastised by it, the restless craving for change rebuked.  Young Sir Willoughby, then, stood in this dilemma:—­a lady was at either hand of him; the only two that had ever, apart from metropolitan conquests, not to be recited, touched his emotions.  Susceptible to beauty, he had never seen so beautiful a girl as Constantia Durham.  Equally susceptible to admiration of himself, he considered Laetitia Dale a paragon of cleverness.  He stood between the queenly rose and the modest violet.  One he bowed to; the other bowed to him.  He could not have both; it is the law governing princes and pedestrians alike.  But which could he forfeit?  His growing acquaintance with the world taught him to put an increasing price on the sentiments of Miss Dale.  Still Constantia’s beauty was of a kind to send away beholders aching.  She had the glory of the racing cutter full sail on a whining