How Winton opened his eyes! But there was no reason why he should withdraw, and acknowledge the Duke’s daughter to be out of his sphere. On the contrary, he did his best to make himself agreeable. And from that time to this, when everybody could see things were coming to a crisis, he had never ceased in the effort. It was the first time--except by Lord Rushbrook, who had done it politically--that this noble maiden had been personally wooed. The sense that she was as other women, had come into her heart with a soft transport of sweetness, emancipating her all at once from those golden bonds of high sacrifice and duty in which she had believed herself to be bound. She had not rebelled against them; but when it appeared now that life might be happiness as well as duty, and that all its delights and hopes were possible to her as to others, the melting of all those icicles that had been formed around her, flooded her gentle soul with tenderness. She was not easily wooed; for nothing could be less like the freedom of manners which makes it natural nowadays for a girl to advance a little on her side, and help on her lover, than the almost timid though always sweet stateliness with which Lady Jane received his devotion. It was a wonder to her, as it cannot be to young ladies who flirt from their cradles. Love! She regarded it with awe, mingled with a touched and surprised gratitude. She was older than a girl usually is when that revelation is first made to her, a fact which deepened every sentiment. Winton did not, could not, divine what was passing in that delicate spirit. But he felt the novelty, the exquisite, modest grace of his reception. He had not been without experience in his own person, and had known what it was to be “encouraged.” But here he was not encouraged. It was romance put into action for the first time, a love-making that was as new, and fresh, and miraculous, and incomprehensible, as if no one had ever made love before. And thus the flood of their own emotions carried the pair on; and if Winton had never paused to think how the Duke would receive his addresses, it may with still greater certainty be assumed that Lady Jane had never considered that momentous question. They went on, unawakened to anything outside their own elysium, which, like most other elysiums of the kind, was a fool’s paradise.