So he loved her, it seems, while she was "yet unknown," something quite possible in the sonneteer's world: and her personality, though shadowed under various names, is to the poet a distinct conception. To the honour of being this poet's inspirer, there are two claimants; one the Lady Rich, the Stella of Sidney, the other the ill-fated Arabella Stuart. It is noteworthy that the only one of all the sonnets addressed personally to particular ladies that is retained in the edition of 1594, is one to Lady Rich. But this sonnet tells us little except that "wished fortune" had once made it possible for him to see her in all her beauty of roses and lilies, stars and waves of gold: but this might have happened if he had once seen that beauteous lady pass along the street in the queen's glittering train. Other sonnets to or about the Lady Rich are equally uncommunicative; and if the ill-starred Penelope Devereux is the one alone that Constable loved, Time has shut the secret tightly in his heart and will not give it up. The other guess is but little nearer to certainty. During the years that Constable was pursuing his shadowy schemes, Arabella Stuart was an object of admiration and of political jealousy; the house where she lived was constantly spied upon, her very tutors were suspected, the wildest schemes were formed upon her royal connections, and it would not be strange if the heart of our poetical zealot turned toward this star of his cause. We may be sure that he would not have been averse to a clandestine meeting, for in writing to that arch-plotter, the Countess of Shrewsbury, Arabella's doting grandmother, he says: "It is more convenient to write unto your Ladyship, than to come unto you or to make any other visits either by day or night till I have further liberty granted me;" besides this, the Earl of Shrewsbury was distantly related to Constable's family, and this fact of kinship may have opened the way; while his sonnet to the Countess intimates that his heart had been touched by some beauty in her Venus' camp. If not Arabella, who could this be? "To you then, you, the fairest of the wise, And wisest of the fair I do appeal. A warrior of your camp by force of eyes Me prisoner took, and will with rigour deal, Except you pity in your heart will place, At whose white hands I only seek for grace." As before, the sonnets addressed to Arabella give no definite information. The first is in the usual strain of praise, and closes: "My drift was this, Some earthly shadow of thy worth to show Whose heavenly self above world's reason is." The second is as follows: