plead his suit in person; this was a mere cousinly visit of which nothing
need come. Indeed, the good king rather overdid his caution, for it seems
he led the Prince to believe that the earlier tacit understanding between
him and his cousin had come to an end, so that Prince Albert arrived more
resolved to relinquish his claims than to urge his rights. In his honest
pride there was hardly room for the thought of binding more closely and
indissolubly the silken cord of love, which had got loosened and warped in
the course of the three years since the pair had parted--a long interval at
the age of twenty. All the same, one of the most notably and deservedly
attractive young men of his generation was to be brought for the second
time, without the compulsory strain of an ulterior motive--declared or
unjustifiably implied--into new contact with a royal maiden, whom a
qualified judge described as possessing "a keen and quick apprehension,
being straightforward, singularly pure-hearted, and free from all vanity
and pretension." In the estimation of this sagacious well-wisher, she was
fitted beforehand "to do ample justice both to the head and heart of the
Prince."

It was at half-past seven on the evening of Thursday, the 10th of October,
that the princely brothers entered again on the scene, no longer young lads
under the guidance of their father, come to make the acquaintance of a
girl-princess, their cousin, who though she might be the heir to a mighty
kingdom, was still entirely under the wing of the Duchess, their aunt and
her mother, in the homely old Palace of Kensington. These were two young
men in the flower of their early manhood, who alighted in due form under
the gateway of one of the stateliest of castles that could ever have
visited their dreams, and found a young Queen as well as a kinswoman
standing first among her ladies, awaiting them at the top of the grand
staircase. However cordial and affectionate, and like herself, she might
be, it had become her part, and she played it well, to take the initiative,