breast, and induced her, who was virgin to her very heart-core, and
whose hand had hardly before been touched by the hand of man, to give
so much, no power of prudence could keep him away from her. So she
concluded she had given her gold for his dross. This conclusion was
more easily arrived at owing to the fact that she had never been
entirely sure of the state of his heart. There had always been a
love-exciting grain of doubt; and when the thought came to her that
she had been obliged to ask him to tell her of his affection, and that
the advances had really all been made by her, that confirmed her
suspicions. It seemed only too clear that she had been too quick to
give--no very comforting thought to a proud girl, even though a
mistaken one.

[Illustration]

As the days went by and Brandon did not come, her anger cooled, as
usual, and again her heart began to ache; but her sense of injury grew
stronger day by day, and she thought she was, beyond a doubt, the most
ill-used of women.

The other matter I wish to tell you is, that the negotiations for
Mary's marriage with old Louis XII of France were beginning to be an
open secret about the court. The Duc de Longueville, who had been held
by Henry for some time as a sort of hostage from the French king, had
opened negotiations by inflaming the flickering passions of old Louis
with descriptions of Mary's beauty. As there was a prospect of a new
emperor soon, and as the imperial bee had of late been making a most
vehement buzzing in Henry's bonnet, he encouraged de Longueville, and
thought it would be a good time to purchase the help of France at the
cost of his beautiful sister and a handsome dower. Mary, of course,