"He certainly is different from other men," returned Jane. "I think he has never spoken a word of love to her. He has said some pretty things, which she has repeated to me; has moralized to some extent, and has actually told her of some of her faults. I should like to see anyone else take that liberty. She seems to like it from him, and says he inspires her with higher, better motives and a yearning to be good; but I am sure he has made no love to her."

"Perhaps it would be better if he did. It might cure her," I replied.

"Oh! no! no! not now; at first, perhaps, but not now. What I fear is that if he remains silent much longer she will take matters in hand and speak herself. I don't like to say that—it doesn't sound well—but she is a princess, and it would be different with her from what it would be with an ordinary girl; she might have to speak first, or there might be no speaking from one who thought his position too far beneath hers. She whose smallest desires drive her so, will never forego so great a thing as the man she loves only for the want of a word or two."

Then it was that Jane told me of the scene with the note, of the little whispered confidence upon their pillows, and a hundred other straws that showed only too plainly which way this worst of ill winds was blowing—with no good in it for any [98]one. Now who could have foretold this? It was easy enough to prophesy that Brandon would learn to love Mary, excite a passing interest, and come off crestfallen, as all other men had done. But that Mary should love Brandon, and he remain heart-whole, was an unlooked-for event—one that would hardly have been predicted by the shrewdest prophet.

[98]

What Lady Jane said troubled me greatly, as it was but the confirmation of my own fears. Her opportunity to know was far better than mine, but I had seen enough to set me thinking.

Brandon, I believe, saw nothing of Mary's growing partiality at all. He could not help but find her wonderfully attractive and interesting, and perhaps it needed only the thought that she might love him, to kindle a flame in his own breast. But at the time of our ride to Windsor, Charles Brandon was not in love with Mary Tudor, however near it he may unconsciously have been. He would whistle and sing, and was as light-hearted as a lark—I mean when away from the princess as well as with her—a mood that does not go with a heart full of heavy love, of impossible, fatal love, such as his would have been for the first princess of the first 

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