‘I do.’

‘What next?’

‘Except that it is grievously in peril, nothing!’

‘Have you known it all along?’

’Dimly-scarcely.  To some extent I knew it, but it did not stand out in broad daylight.  I have been learning the world’s wisdom recently.  Would you have had me neglect it?  Surely much is due to my father?  My relatives have claims on me.  Our princely Houses have.  My country has.’

‘Oh, princess, if you are pleading——­’

‘Can you think that I am?’

The splendour of her high nature burst on me with a shock.

I could have fallen to kiss her feet, and I said indifferently:  ’Not pleading, only it is evident the claims—­I hate myself for bringing you in antagonism with them.  Yes, and I have been learning some worldly wisdom; I wish for your sake it had not been so late.  What made me overleap the proper estimate of your rank!  I can’t tell; but now that I know better the kind of creature—­the man who won your esteem when you knew less of the world!’—­

‘Hush!  I have an interest in him, and do not suffer him to be spurned,’ Ottilia checked me.  ’I, too, know him better, and still, if he is dragged down I am in the dust; if he is abused the shame is mine.’  Her face bloomed.

Her sweet warmth of colour was transfused through my veins.

‘We shall part in a few minutes.  I have a mind to beg a gift of you.’

‘Name it.’

‘That glove.’

She made her hand bare and gave me, not the glove, but the hand.

‘Ah! but this I cannot keep.’

‘Will you have everything spoken?’ she said, in a tone that would have been reproachful had not tenderness melted it.  ’There should be a spirit between us, Harry, to spare the task.  You do keep it, if you choose.  I have some little dread of being taken for a madwoman, and more—­an actual horror of behaving ungratefully to my generous father.  He has proved that he can be indulgent, most trusting and considerate for his daughter, though he is a prince; my duty is to show him that I do not forget I am a princess.  I owe my rank allegiance when he forgets his on my behalf, my friend!  You are young.  None but an inexperienced girl hoodwinked by her tricks of intuition, would have dreamed you superior to the passions of other men.  I was blind; I am regretful—­take my word as you do my hand—­ for no one’s sake but my father’s.  You and I are bound fast; only, help me that the blow may be lighter for him; if I descend from the place I was born to, let me tell him it is to occupy one I am fitted for, or should not at least feel my Family’s deep blush in filling.  To be in the midst of life in your foremost England is, in my imagination, very glorious.  Harry, I remember picturing to myself when I reflected upon your country’s history—­perhaps a year after I had seen the two “young English gentlemen,” that you touch the morning and evening star, and wear them in your coronet, and walk with the sun West and East!  Child’s imagery; but the impression does not wear off.  If I rail at England, it is the anger of love.  I fancy I have good and great things to speak to the people through you.’