" Four years later the
Prince was again visiting England, a guest of the royal family in its
Scottish retreat of Balmoral, where they had just been celebrating
with beacon fires and Highland mirth and music the glad news of the
fall of Sebastopol. He had the full consent of his own family for his
wooing, but the parents of his lady would have had him keep silence
at least till the fifteen-year-old maiden should be confirmed. The
ease and unconstraint of that mountain home-life, however, were not
very favourable to reserve and reticence; a spray of white heather,
offered and received as the national emblem of good fortune, was made
the flower symbol of something more, and words were spoken that
effectually bound the two young hearts, though the formal betrothal
was deferred until some time after the Princess, in the following
March, had received the rite of Confirmation; and "the actual
marriage," said the Prince Consort, "cannot be thought of till the
seventeenth birthday is past." "The secret must be kept _tant bien
que mal_," he had written, well knowing that it would be a good deal
of an open secret.
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