Mina smiled. ‘I am resolved,’ said she. ‘My master himself shall not force me to leave him. You know I am hardened, Warner; shame and reproach have no effect on me. I do not care for being called a camp-follower. In peace and pleasure all the ladies in Africa would be at the duke’s beck; in war and suffering he shall not lack one poor peasant girl. Why, sir, I’ve nothing else to exist for; I’ve no other interest in life. Just to stand by His Grace and watch him and anticipate his wishes, or when I cannot do that to execute them like lightning when they are signified; to wait on him when he is sick or wounded, to hear his groans and bear his heartrending animal-patience in enduring pain; to breathe if I can my own inexhaustible health and energy into him; and oh! if it were practicable, to take his fever and agony, to guard his interests, to take on my shoulders power from him that galls me with its weight; to fill gaps in his mighty train of service that nobody else would dare to step into; to do all that, sir, is to fulfil the destiny I was born to. I know I am of no repute among society at large, because I have devoted myself so wholly to one man. And I know that he very seldom troubles himself to think of what I do; and has never and can never appreciate the unusual feelings of subservience, the total self-sacrifice I offer at his shrine. But then he gives me my reward, and that an abundant one. Mr. Warner, when I was at Fort Adrian and had all the yoke of governing the garrison and military household I used to rejoice in my responsibility and to feel firmer the heavier the weight was assigned me to support. And when my master came over, as he often did, to take one of his general surveys, or on a hunting expedition with some of you, his officers, I had such delights in ordering the banquets and entertainments and in seeing the fires kindled up and chandeliers lighted in those dark halls, knowing for whom the feast was made ready; and it gave me a feeling of ecstasy to hear my young master’s voice as he spoke to you or Arundel or to that stately Hartford, and to see him moving about secure and powerful in his own stronghold, to know what true hearts he had about him, assured as I was that his generals and ministers were men of steel, and that his vassals under my rule were trusty as the very ramparts they garrisoned. The last summer evening that he came here the sun and flowers and quietness brightened his noble features with such happiness I could tell his heart was at rest, for as he lay in the shade where you are now I heard him hum the airs he long ago played on his guitar at Mornington. I was rewarded then to feel that the house I kept was pleasant enough to make him forget Angria, and recur to home. The west, the sweet west, is both his home and mine.’