t you do not know.
Wait until you have seen more of me."

"I certainly hope I shall not have long to wait."

The surprised eyes again glanced quickly up to the serious face, but
the answer came: "That you shall not:--but here is the queen, and I
suppose we must have the benediction." Brandon understood her
hint--that the preaching was over,--and taking it for his dismissal,
playfully lifted his hands in imitation of the old Bishop of
Canterbury, and murmured the first line of the Latin benediction. Then
they both laughed and courtesied, and Brandon walked away.

_CHAPTER IV_

_A Lesson in Dancing_

I laughed heartily when Jane told me of the tilt between Brandon and
Princess Mary, the latter of whom was in the habit of saying unkind
things and being thanked for them.

Brandon was the wrong man to say them to, as Mary learned. He was not
hot-tempered; in fact, just the reverse, but he was the last man to
brook an affront, and the quickest to resent, in a cool-headed,
dangerous way, an intentional offense.

He respected himself and made others do the same, or seem to do so, at
least. He had no vanity--which is but an inordinate desire for those
qualities that bring self-respect, and often the result of conscious
demerit--but he knew himself, and knew that he was entitled to his own
good opinion. He was every inch a man, strong, intelligent and brave
to temerity, with a reckless disregard of consequences, which might
have been dangerous had it not been tempered by a dash of prudence and
caution that gave him ballast.

I was not surprised when I heard of the encounter; for I knew enough
of him to be sure that Mary's high-handedness would meet its
counterpart in my cool friend Brandon. It was, however, an unfortunate
victory, and what all Mary's beauty and brightness would have failed
to do, her honest, open acknowledgment of wrong, following so quickly
upon the heels of her fault, accomplished easily. It drew him within
the circle of her fatal attractions, and when Jane told me of it, I
knew his fate was sealed, and that, sooner or later, his untouched
heart and cool head would fall victim to the shafts that so surely
winged all others.

It might, and probably would, be "later," since, as Brandon had said,
he was not one of those who wear the heart upon the sleeve. Then he
had that strong vein of prudence and caution, which, in view of Mary's
unattainableness, would probably come to his help. But never w