battle a woman ever has to fight."

"Because your heart is already full?" I asked.

She nodded "Yes," her eyes brimming with tears.

Her heart was not only full of her first love, which of itself is a
burden of pain to a young girl, but also it was sore from the grief of
her first loss, the humiliation of her first mistake, and the pang of her
first regret for what might have been.

"It will all pass away, Frances," I returned assuringly.

"Ah, will it, Baron Ned? You know so much more about such matters than I,
who know nothing save what I have learned within the last few weeks."

"I feel sure it will," I answered.

"I wish I felt sure," she returned, trying to smile, but instead
liberating two great tears that had been hanging on her lashes.

After pausing in thought a moment, she said: "But I believe I should
despise myself were I to learn that what I have just done had been
prompted by a mere passing motive. I shall never again see him as I have
seen him. Of that I have neither fear nor doubt, but this I cannot help
but know: he is the first man who has ever come into my heart, and I fear
that in all my life I shall never be able to put him out entirely."

"But you may see him at Whitehall," I suggested. "What then?"