It was only after much prayerful heart-searching that Mary had so far made up her mind to prefer the Prince of Spain. At first she had tried to make it a condition that the Emperor should not ask her to marry any candidate before she had seen him; but this in Philip’s case was impossible. He was too great a catch to be trotted out for inspection and approval, and when this was gently put to her by Renard, she tearfully implored the ambassador, whose hands she seized and held between her own, not to deceive her with regard to the Prince’s character. Was he really well conducted and discreet, as he had been described to her? The ambassador emphatically protested on his honour that he was; but still the Queen, almost doubting still, wished that she might see him before she gave her word. A good portrait by Titian was sent to her, representing the Prince rather younger than he was, a good-looking young man with the fair Austrian skin and yellow hair, the slight curly beard hardly masking the heavy jaw and underlip he inherited from his father. The portrait appears to have banished the last doubts in Mary’s mind. She had never had a love affair before, often as she had been betrothed: even now her idea had been to marry because her position entailed it. But the contemplation of the face of him who was to be her husband, and Renard’s reiteration of his good qualities, gradually worked in her mind an intense yearning for the affection for which she had hungered in vain during her persecuted youth.