The Loyalists, Volumes 1-3 | Page 8

Mr. Evellin, where women are hardly won and quickly lost; but do not therefore despise a Lancashire girl who dares not play with Cupid's arrows, but loves in sad sincerity, or rejects with steady courtesy; yet if you suspect that you cannot meet my devoted constancy with equal singleness of heart, leave me now, good Evellin, ere yet my life is so bound up in your sincerity, that I shall want strength of mind to dissolve the bond. At present I am so much more disposed to respect you than myself, that I may think what you have said was only meant for gallantry, which my ignorance of the world has misconstrued. If after this warning you still persist in your suit, you must either be, till death, my faithful lover, or virtually my murderer."
"My own betrothed Isabel," answered Evellin, "to love, pourtrayed with such chaste simplicity, I owe a confidence as unbounded as thy own. I will put my life in thy keeping, by disclosing the bosom-secret I have concealed even from thy saint-like brother. 'Tis the pledge of my constancy. Mark me, dearest maiden, though a proscribed wanderer wooes thy love, thy hand may be claimed by a peer of England, and those graces which adorn thy native village may ornament the palace of our King."
He paused to see if the glow of ambition supplanted the virgin blushes of acknowledged love; but Isabel's cheek displayed the same meek roseate hue. No hurried exclamation, no gaspings of concealed delight, no lively flashings of an exulting eye, proclaimed that he was dearer to her now than before he acknowledged his high descent. Her objections to a speedy marriage were even confirmed by this discovery. "I must know," said she, "that there is no one who possesses a natural or acquired right to control your choice. People in eminent stations owe many duties to the state, and must not soil their honours by unworthy alliances. Perhaps under your tuition I might so deport myself as not to shame your choice, but I must be well assured that I shall be no obstacle to your moving in your proper sphere, or I will die Isabel Beaumont, praying that you may be happier than my love could make you."
Evellin rewarded this generous attachment by telling her his assumed name was an anagram of his real one, Allan Neville, presumptive heir to the earldom of Bellingham, the honours of which were now possessed by an elder brother, whose declining state of health made it probable that Allan would soon be called from the obscurity in which he lived, and compelled to clear his slandered fame or sink under the malice of his foes. As a younger brother, he was expected to be the founder of his own fortune. His education, therefore, had been most carefully conducted; he had had the best tutors in every branch of learning; and he had travelled under the guidance of an enlightened friend. The pacific character of King James furnishing no employment in arms, he had sought the court as his sphere of action; but while he was displaying the accomplishments he possessed, and acquiring the knowledge of mankind which is necessary to a statesman, he at once attracted the notice of Princes and the envy of their favourites. That fearless candour, and that self-depending integrity which generally attends the finest qualities and noblest dispositions, rendered him careless of the frowns of those whom he discovered to be rather crafty rivals than generous competitors, and determined him rather to despise opposition than to conciliate esteem.
The haughty Duke of Buckingham was then in the zenith of his power. By bringing Prince Charles back from Spain he had relieved the national anxiety; and the short-sighted multitude, forgetting who had endangered the heir-apparent's safety, heaped on him undeserved popularity. Hence his extraordinary good fortune in pleasing all parties so elated him as to make him shew in his conduct that contempt for his benefactor, King James, which he had long secretly entertained. By the impeachment of the Earl of Middlesex, a confidential adviser and personal favourite of the King's, from motives of private pique, and by hurrying the nation into a war with Spain, for which the Parliament had not provided resources, he laid the foundation of the pecuniary difficulties, and created those evil precedents which ultimately contributed to overthrow the regal authority. These fatal results of his pernicious measures formed an awful lesson to Kings on the mischiefs incident to favouritism, and on the folly of erecting a pile of ill-constructed greatness, which, in its fall, often endangers the stability of the throne.
To this vain, ambitious man, practised in all the smooth graces and insidious arts of a court, the aspiring, but frank and honourable Neville, more enlightened, equally engaging, and