forbear from calling
up my special advantages, advise, and stand to the wisdom of this world,
and be the man of honour. The princess had said: 'Not see him when
I have come to him?' I reassured my undiscerning friend partly, not
wholly.

'Would it be commonly sensible or civil, to refuse to see me, having
come?'

Miss Goodwin doubted.

I could indicate forcibly, because I felt, the clear-judging brain and
tempered self-command whereby Ottilia had gained her decision.

Miss Goodwin nodded and gave me the still-born affirmative of
politeness. Her English mind expressed itself willing to have exonerated
the rash great lady for visiting a dying lover, but he was not the same
person now that he was on his feet, consequently her expedition wore a
different aspect:--my not dying condemned her. She entreated me to keep
the fact of the princess's arrival unknown to my father, on which point
we were one. Intensely enthusiastic for the men of her race, she would
have me, above all things, by a form of adjuration designed to be a
masterpiece of persuasive rhetoric, 'prove myself an Englishman.' I was
to show that 'the honour, interests, reputation and position of any lady
(demented or not,' she added) 'were as precious to me as to the owner':
that 'no woman was ever in peril of a shadow of loss in the hands of an
English gentleman,' and so forth, rather surprisingly to me,
remembering her off-hand manner of the foregoing day. But the sense of
responsibility thrown upon her ideas of our superior national dignity
had awakened her fervider naturalness--made her a different person, as
we say when accounting, in our fashion, for what a little added heat may
do.

The half hour allotted to me fled. I went from the room and the house,
feeling that I had seen and heard her who was barely of the world of
humankind for me, so strongly did imagination fly with her. I kissed her
fingers, I gazed in her eyes, I heard the beloved voice. All passed too
swift for happiness. Recollections set me throbbing, but recollection
brought longing. She said, 'Now I have come I must see you, Harry.'
Did it signify that to see me was a piece of kindness at war with her
judgement? She rejoiced at my perfect recovery, though it robbed her of
the plea in extenuation of this step she had taken. She praised me
for abstaining to write to her, when I was stammering a set of
hastily-impressed reasons to excuse myself for the omission. She praised
my step into