It had been arranged that Stockmar
should accompany the Prince to Italy, and the faithful Baron left her
side for that purpose. He wrote to her more than once with sympathetic
descriptions of his young companion; but her mind was by this time made
up. She liked and admired Albert very much, but she did not want to
marry him. "At present," she told Lord Melbourne in April, 1839, "my
feeling is quite against ever marrying." When her cousin's Italian tour
came to an end, she began to grow nervous; she knew that, according to a
long-standing engagement, his next journey would be to England. He would
probably arrive in the autumn, and by July her uneasiness was intense.
She determined to write to her uncle, in order to make her position
clear. It must be understood she said, that "there is no no engagement
between us." If she should like Albert, she could "make no final promise
this year, for, at the very earliest, any such event could not take
place till two or three years hence." She had, she said, "a great
repugnance" to change her present position; and, if she should not like
him, she was "very anxious that it should be understood that she would
not be guilty of any breach of promise, for she never gave any." To Lord
Melbourne she was more explicit. She told him that she "had no great
wish to see Albert, as the whole subject was an odious one;" she hated
to have to decide about it; and she repeated once again that seeing
Albert would be "a disagreeable thing." But there was no escaping the
horrid business; the visit must be made, and she must see him. The
summer slipped by and was over; it was the autumn already; on the
evening of October 10 Albert, accompanied by his brother Ernest, arrived
at Windsor.

Albert arrived; and the whole structure of her existence crumbled into
nothingness like a house of cards. He was beautiful--she gasped--she
knew no more. Then, in a flash, a thousand mysteries were revealed to
her; the past, the present, rushed upon her with a new significance; the
delusions of years were abolished, and an extraordinary, an irresistible
certitude leapt into being in the light of those blue eyes, the smile
of that lovely mouth. The succeeding hours passed in a rapture. She was
able to observe a few more details--the "exquisite nose," the "delicate
moustachios and slight but very slight whiskers," the "beautiful figure,
broad in the shoulders and a fine waist." She rode with him, danced with
him, talked wi