that evening, when the Princess Mary would perform the somewhat
alarming, but, in fact, harmless, operation of wheedling the king out
of his ears. This was just after she had coaxed him to annul a
marriage contract which her father had made for her with Charles of
Germany, then heir to the greatest inheritance that ever fell to the
lot of one man--Spain, the Netherlands, Austria, and heaven only knows
what else.

She had been made love to by so many men, who had lost their senses in
the dazzling rays of her thousand perfections--of whom, I am ashamed
to say, that I, for a time, had been insane enough to be one--that
love had grown to be a sort of joke with her, and man, a poor,
contemptible creature, made to grovel at her feet. Not that she liked
or encouraged it; for, never having been moved herself, she held love
and its sufferings in utter scorn. Man's love was so cheap and
plentiful that it had no value in her eyes, and it looked as if she
would lose the best thing in life by having too much of it.

Such was the royal maid to whose tender mercies, I now tell you
frankly, my friend Brandon was soon to be turned over. He, however,
was a blade of very different temper from any she had known; and when
I first saw signs of a growing intimacy between them I felt, from what
little I had seen of Brandon, that the tables were very likely to be
turned upon her ladyship. Then thought I, "God help her," for in a
nature like hers, charged with latent force, strong and hot and fiery
as the sun's stored rays, it needed but a flash to make it patent,
when damage was sure to follow for somebody--probably Brandon.

Mary did not come home with us from Westminster the morning after the
joustings, as we had expected, but followed some four or five days