moment? Do you not know that a woman with a love in her heart such as
I have for him is safe from every one and everything? That it is her
sheet anchor, sure and fast? Have you not wit enough to know that?"

"Yes, I have," I responded, for the time completely silenced. With
her favorite tactics, she had, as usual, put me in the wrong, though I
soon came again to the attack.

"But he is so base that I grieve to see you with him."

"I suppose he is not very good," she responded, "but it seems to be
the way of these people among whom I have fallen, and he cannot harm
me."

"Oh! but he can. One does not go near smallpox, and there is a moral
contagion quite as dangerous, if not so perceptible, and equally to be
avoided. It must be a wonderfully healthy moral nature, pure and
chaste to the core, that will be entirely contagion-proof and safe
from it."

She hung her head in thought, and then lifted her eyes appealingly to
me. "Am I not that, Edwin? Tell me! Tell me frankly; am I not? It is
the one thing of good I have always striven for. I am so full of other
faults that if I have not that there is no good in me." Her eyes and
voice were full of tears, and I knew in my heart that I stood before
as pure a soul as ever came from the hand of God.

"You are, your majesty; never doubt," I answered. "It is pre-eminently
the one thing in womanhood to which all mankind kneels." And I fell
upon my knee and kissed her hand with a sense of reverence, faith and
trust that has never left me from that day to this. As to my estimate
of how Francis would act when Louis should die, you will see that I
was right.

Not long after this Lady Caskoden and I were given permission to
return to England, and immediately prepared for our homeward journey.

Ah! it was pretty to see Jane bustling about, making ready for our
departure--superintending the packing of our boxes and also
superintending me. That was her great task. I never was so thankful
for riches as when they enabled me to allow Jane full sway among the
Paris shops. But at last, all the fine things being packed, and Mary
having kissed us both--mind you, both--we got our little retinue
together and out we went, through St. Denis, then ho! for dear old
England.

As we left, Mary placed in my hands a letter for Brandon, whose bulk
was so reassuring that I knew he had never been out of her thoughts. I
looked at the letter a moment and said, in all seriousness: "Your
majesty, had I n