weeping--a contempt of herself and of him, too great for mere clamour.
Was he so much of a man in the slow thick density of his brain she
thought, as to have no instinctive perception of her utter misery? He
hastened to her and tried to take her hands, but she drew herself away
from him and sank down in a chair as if exhausted.

"You are tired!" he said kindly--"The tedious ceremonial--the still
more tedious congratulations,--and the fatiguing journey from the
capital to this place have been too much for your strength. You must
rest!"

"It is not that!"--she answered--"not that! I am not tired,--but--but--
I cannot say my prayers tonight till you know my whole heart!"

A curious reverence and pity moved him. All day long he had been in a
state of resentful irritation,--he had loathed himself for having
consented to marry this girl without loving her,--he had branded
himself inwardly as a liar and hypocrite when he had sworn his marriage
vows 'before God,' whereas if he truly believed in God, such vows taken
untruthfully were mere blasphemy;--and now she herself, a young thing
tenderly brought up like a tropical flower in the enervating hot-house
atmosphere of Court life, yet had such a pure, deep consciousness of
God in her, that she actually could not pray with the slightest blur of
a secret on her soul! He waited wonderingly.

"I have plighted my faith to you before God's altar to-day," she said,
speaking more steadily,--"because after long and earnest thought, I saw
that there was no other way of satisfying the two nations to which we
belong, and cementing the friendly relations between them. There is no
woman of Royal birth,--so it has been pointed out to me--who is so