might have been, if Fate had set her youth elsewhere, and a lady who was
noble and her own mother had trained and guarded her. When he saw her at
the Court surrounded, as she ever was, by a court of her own; when he saw
her reigning in her lord's house, receiving and doing gracious honour to
his guests and hers; when she passed him in her coach, drawing every eye
by the majesty of her presence, as she drove through the town, he felt a
deep pang, which was all the greater that his honour bade him conquer it.
He had no ignoble thought of her, he would have scorned to sully his soul
with any light passion; to him she was the woman who might have been his
beloved wife and duchess, who would have upheld with him the honour and
traditions of his house, whose strength and power and beauty would have
been handed down to his children, who so would have been born endowed
with gifts befitting the state to which Heaven had called them. It was
of this he thought when he saw her, and of naught less like to do her
honour. And as he had marked her so, he saw in her eyes, despite her
dignity and grace, she had marked him. He did not know how closely, or
that she gave him the attention he could not restrain himself from
bestowing upon her. But when he bowed before her, and she greeted him
with all courtesy, he saw in her great, splendid eye that had Fate willed
it so, she would have understood all his thoughts, shared all his
ambitions, and aided him to uphold his high ideals. Nay, he knew she
understood him even now, and was stirred by what stirred him also, even
though they met but rarely, and when they encountered each other, spoke
but as kinsman and kinswoman who would show each other all gracious
respect and honour. It was because of this pang which struck his great
heart at times that he was not a frequent visitor at my Lord
Dunstanwolde's mansion, but appeared there only at such assemblies as
were matters of ceremony, his absence from which would have been a noted
thing. His kinsman was fond of him, and though himself of so much riper
age, honoured him greatly. At times he strove to lure him into visits of