‘Gratified vanity is one thing, and real preference another. A women oft-times likes that suitor best whom most she seems to avoid. Perhaps for that very reason, perhaps because she is weak at heart and cannot help herself.’ She spoke the last sentence low, and more to herself than to him. She was willing to console him, for the deeper a kind nature is wounded, the more it feels for the sorrows of others. Also, it may be that she found a certain relief in repeating the lesson it had cost her so much pains to learn. He drew closer to her. ‘Thank you,’ said he, with a beaming look of gratitude. ‘You are a true friend! Believe me, Mistress Carmichael, I am not ungrateful. Can I serve you in any way in return?’ ‘It is no question of that,’ she replied. ‘Our positions are so different. I only say to you, remember your own motto--“To the End.” If I were a man I think I could trust and hope for ever. I think I could be staunch and unselfish and true, in defiance of sorrow, suffering, opposition, nay, even of ingratitude and neglect I would prove to the woman whom I had chosen that at least she must be proud of my choice, that a man’s honest affection was no vacillating fancy, but an eternal truth; and even if she did not love me, I would force her to confess that it was her own inferiority of nature that could not mate with mine. But why should I talk thus to you?’ she added, breaking off with rather a bitter laugh. ‘You are a _man_: you cannot understand me; you will not believe in anything unless you can see it with your two eyes, and grasp it in your two hands, and be told by all your friends besides that it is there. If you had but one gold piece in the world, you must beat it out thin, and lacker it over your spurs, and your housings, and the hilt of your sword; you could not hide it away in your bosom, and keep it unspent and unsuspected next your heart!’ ‘I know not,’ he said with a brightening face; ‘your words give me hope. I seem to see things differently since you have been speaking to me. You are my good angel. Help me; advise me; tell me what I had better do.’ ‘In the first place, go and talk to somebody else,’ she replied, laughing. ‘You will scarcely advance the cause you have at heart by whispering with me in a corner. Looks of inquiry, if not displeasure, have been already shot this way; and although, perhaps, we are the only two people in this room who never could be more than friends, courtiers’ eyes are so sharp and their inferences so good-natured, that they have probably ere this made their usual grand discovery of that which does not exist. And so, good Master Ogilvy, my last word is, think of your motto and speed you well!’ Thus speaking, she made him a stately curtsey and withdrew towards the Queen; but Mary Carmichael was right, and their interview, short as it was, had been remarked by more than one interested observer.