and had begged her 'dearest uncle to take care of the health of one, now _so dear_ to me, and to take him under _your special_ protection,' adding, 'I hope and trust all will go on prosperously and well on this subject of so much importance to me.'[65] But that had been years ago, when she was a mere child; perhaps, indeed, to judge from the language, the letter had been dictated by Lehzen; at any rate, her feelings., and all the circumstances, had now entirely changed. Albert hardly interested her at all. In later life the Queen declared that she had never for a moment dreamt of marrying anyone but her cousin;[66] her letters and diaries tell a very different story. On August 26, 1837, she wrote in her journal: 'To-day is my _dearest_ cousin Albert's 18th birthday, and I pray Heaven to pour its choicest blessings on his beloved head!' In the subsequent years, however, the date passes unnoticed. It had been arranged that Stockmar should accompany the Prince to Italy, and the faithful Baron left her side for that purpose. He wrote to her more than once with sympathetic descriptions of his young companion; but her mind was by this time made up. She liked and admired Albert very much, but she did not want to marry him. 'At present,' she told Lord Melbourne in April 1839, '_my_ feeling is quite against ever marrying.'[67] When her cousin's Italian tour came to an end, she began to grow nervous; she knew that, according to a long-standing engagement, his next journey would be to England. He would probably arrive in the autumn, and by July her uneasiness was intense. She determined to write to her uncle, in order to make her position clear. It must be understood, she {95} said, that 'there is _no engagement_ between us.' If she should like Albert, she could 'make _no final promise this year_, for, at the _very earliest_, any such event could not take place till _two or three years hence_.' She had, she said, 'a _great_ repugnance' to change her present position; and, if she should not like him, she was '_very_ anxious that it should be understood that she would _not_ be guilty of any breach of promise, for she never gave any.'[68] To Lord Melbourne she was more explicit. She told him that she 'had no great wish to see Albert, as the whole subject was an odious one'; she hated to have to decide about it; and she repeated once again that seeing Albert would be 'a disagreeable thing.'[69] But there was no escaping the horrid business; the visit must be made, and she must see him. The summer slipped by and was over; it was the autumn already; on the evening of October 10 Albert, accompanied by his brother Ernest, arrived at Windsor.