’"My Professor” was won by it.  He once did incline to be the young bold Englishman’s enemy.  “Why is he here? what seeks he among us?” It was his jealousy, not of the man, but of the nation, which would send one to break and bear away his carefully cultivated German lily.  No eye but his did read me through.  And you endured the trial that was forced on you.  You made no claim for recompense when it was over.  No, there is no pure love but strong love!  It belongs to our original elements, and of its purity should never be question, only of its strength.

’I could not help you when you were put under scrutiny before the margravine and the baroness.  Help from me would have been the betrayal of both.  The world has accurate eyes, if they are not very penetrating.  The world will see a want of balance immediately, and also too true a balance, but it will not detect a depth of concord between two souls that do not show some fretfulness on the surface.

’So it was considered that in refusing my cousin Otto and other proposed alliances, I was heart-free.  An instructed princess, they thought, was of the woeful species of woman.  You left us:  I lost you.  I heard you praised for civil indifference to me—­the one great quality you do not possess!  Then it was the fancy of people that I, being very cold, might be suffered to hear my cousin plead for himself.  The majority of our family favour Otto.  He was permitted to woo me as though I had been a simple maid; and henceforth shall I have pity for all poor little feminine things who are so persecuted, asked to inflict cruelty—­to take a sword and strike with it.  But I—­who look on marriage as more than a surrender—­I could well withstand surpassing eloquence.  It was easy to me to be inflexible in speech and will when I stood there, entreated to change myself.  But when came magically the other, who is my heart, my voice, my mate, the half of me, and broke into illumination of things long hidden—­oh! then did I say to you that it was my weakness had come upon me?  It was my last outcry of self—­the “I” expiring.  I am now yours, “We” has long overshadowed “I,” and now engulphs it.  We are one.  If it were new to me to find myself interrogating the mind of my beloved, relying on his courage, taking many proofs of his devotion, I might pause to re-peruse my words here, without scruple, written.  I sign it, before heaven, your Ottilia.

               ’OttiliaFrederika Wilhelmina Hedwig,
                    ‘Princess of Eppenwelzen-Sarkeld.’

CHAPTER XXXII

AN INTERVIEW WITH PRINCE ERNEST AND A MEETING WITH PRINCE OTTO

A messenger from Prince Ernest commanding my immediate attendance at the palace signified that the battle had begun.  I could have waited for my father, whose return from one of his expeditions in the prince’s service was expected every instant; but though I knew I should have, had a powerful coadjutor in him to assist me through such a conference, I preferred to go down alone.  Prince Otto met me in the hall.  He passed by, glancing an eye sharply, and said over his shoulder,