. I like you all the better. You 're a
brave partisan. I don't expect women to be philosophers.'

'Well, Harry, I would take your side as firmly as anybody's.'

'Do, then; tell the squire how I am situated.'

'Ah!' she half sighed, 'I knew this was coming.'

'How could it other than come? You can do what you like with the squire.
I'm dependent on him, and I am betrothed to the Princess Ottilia. God
knows how much she has to trample down on her part. She casts off--to
speak plainly, she puts herself out of the line of succession, and for
whom? for me. In her father's lifetime she will hardly yield me her hand;
but I must immediately be in a position to offer mine. She may: who can
tell? she is above all women in power and firmness. You talk of
generosity; could there be a higher example of it?'

'I daresay; I know nothing of princesses,' Janet murmured. 'I don't quite
comprehend what she has done. The point is, what am I to do?'

'Prepare him for it. Soothe him in advance. Why, dear Janet, you can
reconcile him to anything in a minute.'

'Lie to him downright?'

'Now what on earth is the meaning of that, and why can't you speak
mildly?'

'I suppose I speak as I feel. I'm a plain speaker, a plain person. You
don't give me an easy task, friend Harry.'

'If you believe in his generosity, Janet, should you be afraid to put it
to proof?'

'Grandada's generosity, Harry? I do believe in it as I believe in my own
life. It happens to be the very thing I must keep myself from rousing in
him, to be of any service to you. Look at the old house!' She changed her
tone. 'Looking on old Riversley with the eyes of my head even, I think
I'm looking at something far away in the memory. Perhaps the deep red
brick causes it. There never was a house with so many beautiful creepers.
Bright as they are, you notice the roses on the wall. There's a face for
me forever from every window; and good-bye, Riversley! Harry, I'll obey
your wishes.'

So saying, she headed me, trotting down the heath-track.

CHAPTER XXXVII

JANET RENOUNCES ME

An illness of old Sewis, the butler,--amazingly resembling a sick monkey
in his bed,--kept me from paying a visit to Temple and seeing my father
for several weeks, during which time Janet loyally accustomed the squire
to hear of the German princess, and she did it with a decent and
agreeable cheerfulness that I quite approved of. I should have been
enraged at a martyr-like appearance on her