THE TRUE MAID OF HONOUR. audience, he would have withdrawn, but the servant who attended detained him ; and Margaret spoke so softly and humbly that he now felt sure that she was not the pert damsel he had originally pictured to himself. Their acquaintance now began to ripen into warm friendship, and Evelyn to look upon her with the utmost respect, every visit lessening his prejudices and increasing his admiration. Anxious to preserve the friendship so tardily obtained, the young maid of honour drew up a serio-comical compact. Evelyn very agreeably relates the interview in which she offered it to him. Visiting her at Whitehall, and remarking that she looked pensive and abstracted, he playfully asked her the reason. " Because," she replied, sadly, "I have never a friend in the world." Evelyn assured her that that was impossible, " for," said he, " all that know you must love you ; " adding slily, " what did she think of a certain gentleman beyond the seas ?" This allusion made her still more melancholy, for Sydney Godolphin - then, with his brother, Sir William Godolphin, absent on a mission to Spain-was very ill ; but she persisted in her endeavours to ensure Evelyn's friendship. "I believe you the only person in the world," she said to him, " who would make me such a friend as I wish for, if I had merit enough to deserve it. Be my friend, and look upon me henceforth as your child." Taking up a paper on which Evelyn, during the conversation, had scribbled something resembling 23
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