From her quiet retreat in Bresse Margaret was summoned, on the death of her brother, to rule the States, and care for the children whom he had left behind, bereft of a mother's care by the lunacy of Joanna. How nobly and self-sacrificingly she fulfilled her trust this book to some extent will tell; but of all the sacrifices she made in her wise and gentle life none was greater than the renunciation of her love, perhaps the only love she ever experienced, for the handsome Englishman who appears to have treated her so shabbily. For Charles Brandon, though his King's first favourite and brother-in-law, hardly played the game of love very fairly with Margaret. Kneeling at her feet in sweet dalliance after the banquet at Tournai, he drew from her finger, as lovers will, a ring, and placed it upon his own hand. In gentle chiding she told him in French, and then in Flemish so like English that he understood, that he was a thief. But soon she became alarmed when she saw he meant to keep it for a pledge; for it was well known and might compromise her; and she prayed him to restore it. 'But he understood me not,' and only the intervention of Henry the King, and a promise of a bracelet of hers in exchange, made Charles Brandon give up his capture. But not for long; for again on his knees before the Princess at Lille soon afterwards, he took the ring a second time, and all the entreaties of the lady were unavailing to obtain its restoration, though a ring of far greater value was given to her in exchange, with all sorts of imprudent, perhaps not more than half-serious, promises on both sides never to marry without the consent of the other. Margaret, as she pathetically says, had never any intention of marrying at all, so unhappy had she been in her previous marriages: but at all events she hid Brandon's ring in her bosom, unseen by the world, and cherished the secret of her little love passage. Not so King Henry's flamboyant favourite, who made no concealment of his conquest, and vaunted the possession of the jewel, though faithful Margaret could not believe it of him: 'for I esteem him much a man of virtue and wise.'