Not even
bound to him by the daily occurrences of life, she had no sympathies
with the husband who had been forced upon her, and who had once
contemptuously put aside the timid heart that was then prepared to
love him. This stranger she was now to meet with every sign of love,
because he had one day waked up to the conviction that the heart he
had once spurned was worthy of him. It was her duty now to return
this love--to consecrate the rich treasures of her heart to him who
had once scorned them. Her soul rose in arms at this thought like an
insulted lioness, and she felt some of that burning hatred that the
lioness feels for her master who wishes to tame her with an iron
rod. The prince was to her but her master, who had bound and held
her heart in irons, to keep it from escaping from him.
During these seven long years, she had experienced all the freedom
and happiness of girlhood; her heart had beat with a power, a fire
condemned by the princess herself, but which she was incapable of
extinguishing.
Trembling and restless, she wandered through the rooms, smiling when
she would have given worlds to have shrieked out her pain, her
agony; decked in splendid garments, when she would gladly have been
in her shroud.
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