e
here for some purpose?'

'I must have detained you already too long.'

'Time is not the offender. Since I have come, the evil----'

'Evil? Are not your actions free?'

'Patience, my friend. The freer my actions, the more am I bound to
deliberate on them. I have the habit of thinking that my deliberations
are not in my sex's fashion of taking counsel of the nerves and the
blood.

In truth, Harry, I should not have come but for my acknowledgement of
your right to bid me come.'

'You know, princess, that in honouring me with your attachment, you
imperil your sovereign rank?'

'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 consi