So at least thought his son and successor, who at times was given to wondering whether if, like his father, he had such a secret he would be able to keep it as closely and as well. He thought not. It would be scarcely worth while. It can only be the greatest love that is always silent,--and in the greatest,--that is, the ideal and self-renouncing love,--he did not believe; though in his own life’s experience he had been given a proof that such love is possible to women, if not to men. When he was about twenty, he had loved, or had imagined he loved, a girl,--a pretty creature, who did not know him as a prince at all, but simply as a college student. He used to walk with her hand in hand through the fields by the river, and gather wild flowers for her to wear in her little white bodice. She had shy soft eyes, and a timid, yet trusting look, full of tenderness and pathos. Moved by a romantic sense of honour and chivalry, he promised to marry her, and thereupon wrote an impulsive letter to his father informing him of his intention. Of course he was summoned home from college at once,--he was reminded of his high destiny--of the Throne that would be his if he lived to occupy it,--of the great and serious responsibilities awaiting him,--and of how impossible it was that the Heir-Apparent to the Crown should marry a commoner. “Why not?” he cried passionately--“If she be good and true she is as fit to be a queen as any woman royally born! She is a queen already in her own right!” But while he was being argued with and controlled by all the authorities concerned in king’s business, his little sweetheart herself put an end to the matter. Her parents told her all unpreparedly, and with no doubt unnecessary harshness, the real position of the college lad with whom she had wandered in the fields so confidingly; and in the bewilderment of her poor little broken heart and puzzled brain, she gave herself to the river by whose flowering banks she had sworn her maiden vows,--though she knew it not,--to her future King; and so, drowning her life and love together, made a piteous exit from all difficulty. Before she went forth to die, she wrote a farewell to her Royal lover, posting the letter herself on her way to the river, and, by the merest chance he received it without a spy’s intervention. It was but one line, scrawled in a round youthful hand, and blotted with many tears. “Sir--my love!--forgive me!”