As Will Ives's wife she would be safer and better protected than as Farmer Devenish's unwedded daughter.
As for himself, thoughts of love and marriage had seldom entered his mind, and had always been dismissed with a light laugh.

As he had said to Will, he was wedded to a cause, to a resolute aim and object, and nothing nearer or dearer had ever yet intruded itself upon him to wean away his first love from the object upon which it had been so ardently bestowed.

The little prince--as in his thoughts he still called him sometimes--was the object of his loving homage.

King Henry was too little the man, and Queen Margaret too much, for either of them to fulfil his ideal or win the unquestioning love and loyalty of his heart; but in Edward, Prince of Wales, as he always called him, he had an object worthy of his admiration and worship.
Everything he heard about that princely boy seemed to agree with what he remembered of him in bygone years.

He and not the gentle and half-imbecile king would be the real monarch of the realm; and who better fitted to reign than such a prince?
The kindly welcome he received at the Priory from Brother Lawrence and the prior himself was pleasant to one who had so long been a mere wanderer on the face of the earth.