“I am glad I witnessed the interview,” said I, drawing her hand through my arm to reassure her, “for notwithstanding all that happened, I now feel sure you are to be trusted.”

“But am I?” she asked, showing a self-doubt which I wished to remove.

“Yes, you will have no greater trial at court than the one through which you have just passed.  You have combated successfully not only your own love, but the love of the man you love.”

“Ah, Baron Ned, don’t!” she exclaimed, in mild reproach, shrinking from the thought I had just uttered so plainly.

“It is always well to look misfortunes squarely in the face,” I answered.  “It helps one to despise them.  The thing we call bad luck can’t endure a steady gaze.”

“It will help me in one respect,—­this—­this—­what has happened,” she returned, hanging her head.

“In what way?” I asked, catching a foreboding hint of her meaning.

She hesitated, but, after an effort, brought herself to say, “I shall never again have to combat my own heart, and surely that is the hardest battle a woman ever has to fight.”

“Because your heart is already full?” I asked.

She nodded “Yes,” her eyes brimming with tears.

Her heart was not only full of her first love, which of itself is a burden of pain to a young girl, but also it was sore from the grief of her first loss, the humiliation of her first mistake, and the pang of her first regret for what might have been.

“It will all pass away, Frances,” I returned assuringly.

“Ah, will it, Baron Ned?  You know so much more about such matters than I, who know nothing save what I have learned within the last few weeks.”

“I feel sure it will,” I answered.

“I wish I felt sure,” she returned, trying to smile, but instead liberating two great tears that had been hanging on her lashes.

After pausing in thought a moment, she said:  “But I believe I should despise myself were I to learn that what I have just done had been prompted by a mere passing motive.  I shall never again see him as I have seen him.  Of that I have neither fear nor doubt, but this I cannot help but know:  he is the first man who has ever come into my heart, and I fear that in all my life I shall never be able to put him out entirely.”

“But you may see him at Whitehall,” I suggested.  “What then?”

“If he remains there, I shall not.  But when he learns that his presence will drive me away, I know he will leave,” she answered.

“I believe you estimate him justly.  Did you tell him you were going to court?” I asked.

“No,” she answered, “because I am not sure that I shall go.”

“Then we’ll not tell him,” I suggested.

“Nor any one else?” she asked.

“By all means, no one else,” I replied.  “I am sure you will win in this beauty contest, but you might fail, in which case we should be sorry if any one knew of the attempt.”