always well to look misfortunes squarely in the face," I answered.
"It helps one to despise them. The thing we call bad luck can't endure a
steady gaze."

"It will help me in one respect,--this--this--what has happened," she
returned, hanging her head.

"In what way?" I asked, catching a foreboding hint of her meaning.

She hesitated, but, after an effort, brought herself to say, "I shall
never again have to combat my own heart, and surely that is the hardest
battle a woman ever has to fight."

"Because your heart is already full?" I asked.

She nodded "Yes," her eyes brimming with tears.

Her heart was not only full of her first love, which of itself is a
burden of pain to a young girl, but also it was sore from the grief of
her first loss, the humiliation of her first mistake, and the pang of her
first regret for what might have been.

"It will all pass away, Frances," I returned assuringly.

"Ah, will it, Baron Ned? You know so much more about such matters than I,
who know nothing save what I have learned within the last few weeks."

"I feel sure it will," I answered.

"I wish I felt sure," she returned, trying to smile, but instead
liberating two great tears that had been hanging on her lashes.

After pausing in thought a moment, she said: "But I believe I should
despise myself were I to learn that what I have just done had been
prompted by a mere passing motive. I shall never again see him as I have
seen him. Of that I have neither fear nor doubt, but this I cannot help
but know: he is the first man who has ever come into my heart, and I fear
that in all my life I shall never be able to put him out entirely."

"But you may see him at Whitehall," I suggested. "What then?"

"If he remains there, I shall not. But when he learns that his presence
will drive me away, I know he will leave," she answered.

"I believe you estimate him justly. Did you tell him you were going to
court?" I asked.

"No," she answered, "because I am not sure that I shall go."

"Then we'll not tell him," I suggested.

"Nor any one else?" she asked.

"By all means, no one else," I replied. "I am sure you will win in this
beauty contest, but you might fail, in which case we should be sorry if
any one knew of the attempt."

"I shall not fail," she answered confidently, though not in vanity.

"But Hamilton said he would return to the siege when he had made his
fortune," I suggested.

"Of that I have no hope," she returned d