But of all ungrateful and
reluctant tasks, that of striving to forget is the least likely to
succeed. Adelheid was sustained only by her sense of duty and the desire
not to disappoint her father's wishes, to which habit and custom had given
nearly the force of law with maidens of her condition, though her reason
and judgment no less than her affections were both strongly enlisted on
the other side. Indeed, with the single exception of the general unfitness
of a union between two of unequal stations, there was nothing to
discredit her choice, if that may be termed choice which, after all, was
more the result of spontaneous feeling and secret sympathy than of any
other cause, unless it were a certain equivocal reserve, and a manifest
uneasiness, whenever allusion was made to the early history and to the
family of the soldier. This sensitiveness on the part of Sigismund had
been observed and commented on by others as well as by herself, and it had
been openly ascribed to the mortification of one who had been thrown, by
chance, into an intimate association that was much superior to what he was
entitled to maintain by birth; a weakness but too common, and which few
have strength of mind to resist or sufficient pride to overcome.
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