I promised solemnly and have always kept my word, as this true,
gracious woman, so full of faults and beauties, virtues and failings,
has, ever since that day and moment, kept hers. It seemed that my
love, or what I supposed was love, left my heart at once, frozen in
the cold glint of her eyes as she smiled upon my first avowal;
somewhat as disease may leave the sickened body upon a great shock.
And in its place came the restful flame of a friend's love, which so
softly warms without burning. But the burning! There is nothing in
life worth having compared with it for all its pains and agonies. Is
there?

"Now if you must love somebody," continued the princess, "there is
Lady Jane Bolingbroke, who is beautiful and good, and admires you,
and, I think, could learn to----" but here the lady in question ran
out from behind the draperies, where, I believe, she had been
listening to it all, and put her hand over her mistress' mouth to
silence her.

"Don't believe one word she says, Sir Edwin," cried Lady Jane; "if you
do I never _will_ like you." The emphasis on the "will" held out such
involuntary promise in case I did not believe the princess, that I at
once protested total want of faith in a single syllable she had said
about her, and vowed that I knew it could not be true; that I dared
not hope for such happiness.

You see, I had begun to make love to Jane almost before I was off my
knees to Mary, and, therefore, I had not been much hurt in Mary's
case. I had suffered merely a touch of the general epidemic, not the
lingering, chronic disease that kills.