While the hopeful uncle was writing this letter, Victoria was talking with Lord Melbourne.
"My lord," she said, "I have made up my mind at last, and I am ready to marry Prince Albert whenever he wants me."
"I am very glad of it," replied her fatherly friend. "You will be much more comfortable; for a woman cannot stand alone for any time, in whatever position she may be."
"Do you think that my people will be pleased?" she asked.
"I believe that they will," he replied, for he knew very well how eager they were for her marriage. No one liked the Duke of Cumberland, who was now King Ernest of Hanover, but if the Queen died without children, he would come over to England and wear the English crown as well as that of Hanover. The feeling against him was so strong that it had even been proposed in Parliament to make a law forbidding him ever to occupy the throne.
On the fourth morning of their visit, the two Princes went hunting. It was a long forenoon to the Queen, for she had what she afterwards called a "nervous" thing to do. They came back at noon, but they had hardly time to change their hunting clothes before a message was brought to Prince Albert that the Queen wished to see him.
Now, royal etiquette forbade that this Prince of a little German duchy should ask the sovereign of Great Britain for her hand; so when Albert reached the Queen's apartments, he was obliged to wait until she had spoken.
"I think you must know why I wished you to come," she said shyly. The Prince had still to keep silent; he could only bow, but his bow must have expressed a great deal, for she went on bravely: "It will make me very happy if you will consent to what I wish."
In just what form the Prince made his reply the Queen did not reveal, but it was evidently satisfactory, for she wrote, "He is perfection in every way." That very day she sent a letter to King Leopold in which she said: "I am so much bewildered by it all that I hardly know how to write. But I do feel very happy."
A few weeks before this time she had written Baron Stockmar that she could not think of marrying for three or four years, but that very day she wrote him: "I do feel so guilty, I know not how to begin my letter, but I think the news it will contain will be sufficient to insure your forgiveness. Albert has completely won my heart, and all was settled between us this morning I feel certain that he will make me very happy. I wish I could say," continued the modest little sovereign of Great Britain, "that I felt as certain of making him happy, but I shall do my best."