‘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.’

There she stopped.  The fervour she repressed in speech threw a glow over her face, like that on a frosty bare autumn sky after sunset.

I pressed my lips to her hand.

In our silence another of the fatal yellow volumes thumped the floor.

She looked into my eyes and asked,

‘Have we been speaking before a witness?’

So thoroughly had she renovated me, that I accused and reproved the lurking suspicion with a soft laugh.

‘Beloved!  I wish we had been.’

‘If it might be,’ she said, divining me and musing.

‘Why not?’

She stared.

‘How?  What do you ask?’

The look on my face alarmed her.  I was breathless and colourless, with the heart of a hawk eyeing his bird—­a fox, would be the truer comparison, but the bird was noble, not one that cowered.  Her beauty and courage lifted me into high air, in spite of myself, and it was a huge weight of greed that fell away from me when I said,

’I would not urge it for an instant.  Consider—­if you had just plighted your hand in mine before a witness!’