As I read, I saw her lovely young face, radiant with love and sorrow as I had last seen it, and pressing the precious little letter to my lips, I said fervently, "Yes, Nicolete, I will be true." CHAPTER XII IN WHICH I REVIEW MY ACTIONS AND RENEW MY RESOLUTIONS No doubt the youthful reader will have but a poor opinion of me after the last two chapters. He will think that in the scene with the Major-General I acted with lamentably little spirit, and that generally my friend Alastor would have proved infinitely more worthy of the situation. It is quite true, I confess it. The whole episode was made for Alastor. Nicolete and he were born for each other. Alas! it is one of the many drawbacks of experience that it frequently prevents our behaving with spirit. I must be content to appeal to the wiser and therefore sadder reader, of whom I have but a poor opinion if he too fails to understand me. He, I think, will understand why I didn't promptly assault the Major-General, seize Nicolete by the waist, thrust her into her ancestral carriage, haul the coachman from his box, and, seizing the reins, drive away in triumph before astonishment had time to change into pursuit. Truly it had been but the work of a moment, and there was only one consideration which prevented my following this now-I-call-that-heroic course. It is a consideration I dare hardly venture to write, and the confession of which will, I know, necessitate my changing my age back again to thirty on the instant. Oh, be merciful, dear romantic reader! I didn't strike the Major-General, because, oh, because I AGREED WITH HIM! I loved Nicolete, you must have felt that. She was sweet to me as the bunch of white flowers that, in their frail Venetian vase, stand so daintily on my old bureau as I write, doing their best to sweeten my thoughts. Dear was she to me as the birds that out in the old garden yonder sing and sing their best to lift up my leaden heart. She was dear as the Spring itself, she was only less dear than Autumn. Yes, black confession! after the first passion of her loss, the immediate ache of her young beauty had passed, and I was able to analyse what I really felt, I not only agreed with him, I thanked God for the Major-General! He had saved me from playing the terrible part of executioner. He had just come in time to behead the Lady Jane Grey of our dreams.