I strove to study, to estimate my real emotion for her, and the probable duration of it. Was this love misplaced? Reason said it was. Cold Reason! Yet I loved her, and love levels everything; but this passion ran full butt against a thousand old social (or anti-social) prejudices which had formed the leading principles, the life, the second religion as it were, of my family for centuries--never to wed one of a blood, or name, or race inferior to their own! Nicola was but a waiting-woman--the soubrette of the French king's dissipated mistress--and yet I loved her with all the heedless ardour of a boy. Rank and name, pride, prejudice, and pedigree, with all their old heraldic quarterings and mummery, what were they to me, but something to lay at the feet of this charming French girl when I said that I loved her? For some miles of the way Nicola had been very sad; but something in the spirit of the above paragraph, which I had infused into my conversation, raised her spirit, and she rallied as we approached St. Michel. 'Dear Arthur,' said she, patting my bridle-hand, while a beautiful smile lit up her loving blue eyes, 'you have a princely heart! I would that I were a countess--yea, even mademoiselle of Lorraine for your sake.' 'The beautiful Marie-Louise?' 'Yes--even the beautiful Marie-Louise--she who is deemed so proud, so artful, and intriguing.' 'Wherefore?' 'Because you could not say or sacrifice more for me, a poor girl, than I would then do for you, a simple gentleman.' 'Listen to me, Nicola. Lovely as this princess, the bride of Count Pappenheim, is famed to be, high though her race, and splendid her fortune, I would not give one golden hair of your beautiful head, Nicola, for Louise with all her rank and splendour.' 'Dear, kind, and loving Arthur!' said she, smiling through her tears; 'but I ought not to love you.' 'Nicola?' 'It is very true--but too true.' 'And why?' 'For many reasons more than I dare to say. One I may mention----' 'Name it. But already you have named so many.' 'You are a Huguenot--I a Catholic.' 'Well, and what of that?' ''Tis an error in faith my doing so; but I fear that we poor women are all pagans in the question of duty when it jars with love.' 'Then kiss me, my beautiful heathen.' We were now close to the gate of St. Michel, and, alas! consequently only thirty miles from Nanci, and we felt more _triste_ than ever. CHAPTER XL. THE DAUGHTER OF MACBETH.