I chose a roof of limes to read under.

‘Noblest and best beloved!’ the princess addressed me in her own tongue, doubting, I perceived, as her training had taught her, that my English eyes would tolerate apostrophes of open-hearted affection.  The rest was her English confided to a critic who would have good reason to be merciful: 

’The night has come that writes the chapter of the day.  My father has had his interview with his head-forester to learn what has befallen from the storm in the forest.  All has not been told him!  That shall not be delayed beyond to-morrow.

’I am hurried to it.  And I had the thought that it hung perhaps at the very end of my life among the coloured leaves, the strokes of sunset—­ that then it would be known! or if earlier, distant from this strange imperative Now.  But we have our personal freedom now, and I have learnt from minutes what I did mean to seek from years, and from our forest what I hoped that change of scene, travel, experience, would teach me.  Yet I was right in my intention.  It was a discreet and a just meaning I had.  For things will not go smoothly for him at once:  he will have his hard battle.  He is proved:  he has passed his most brave ordeal.  But I!  Shall I see him put to it and not certainly know myself?  Even thus I reasoned.  One cannot study without knowing that our human nature is most frail.  Daily the body changes, daily the mind—­why not the heart?  I did design to travel and converse with various persons.

’Pardon it to one who knew that she would require super-feminine power of decision to resolve that she would dispose of herself!

’I heard of Harry Richmond before I saw him.  My curiosity to behold the two fair boys of the sailor kingdom set me whipping my pony after them that day so remote, which is always yesterday.  My thoughts followed you, and I wondered—­does he mean to be a distinguished countryman of his Nelson? or a man of learning?  Then many an argument with “my Professor,” until—­for so it will ever be—­the weaker creature did succumb in the open controversy, and thought her thoughts to herself.  Contempt of England gained on me still.  But when I lay withered, though so young, by the sea-shore, his country’s ancient grandeur insisted, and I dreamed of Harry Richmond, imagining that I had been false to my childhood.  You stood before me, dearest.  You were kind:  you were strong, and had a gentle voice.  Our souls were caught together on the sea.  Do you recollect my slip in the speaking of Lucy Sibley’s marriage?—­“We change countries.”  At that moment I smelt salt air, which would bring you to my sight and touch were you and I divided let me not think how far.

’To-morrow I tell the prince, my father, that I am a plighted woman.  Then for us the struggle, for him the grief.  I have to look on him and deal it.

’I can refer him to Dr. Julius for my estimate of my husband’s worth.