How could it be possible that she could treat with disdain this gallant gentleman, if he loved her, as he surely must?
Herself she had been sure that she had seen an ardent flame in his blue eyes, even that first day when he had bowed to her with that air of grace as he spoke of the fragrance of the rose leaves he had thought wafted from her robe.

How could a woman whom he loved resist him?
How could she cause him to suffer by forcing him to stand at arm's length when he sighed to draw near and breathe his passion at her feet?
In the silence of her chamber as she disrobed, she sighed with restless pain, but did not know that her sighing was for grief that love--of which there seemed so little in some lives--could be wasted and flung away.

She could not fall into slumber when she lay down upon her pillow, but tossed from side to side with a burdened heart.
"She is so young and beautiful and proud," she thought.

"It is because I am so much older that I can see these things--that I see that this is surely the one man who should be her husband.

There may be many others, but they are none of them her equals, and she would scorn and hate them when she was once bound to them for life.