In dead silence he read, in dead silence he put down the paper on the little ivory table by the throne, and walked to the seat reserved for the monarch, if he should take part in the debate, as the first of his Ministers. His step did not falter, he neither hurried nor hung back, and after a pause of a moment or two, in which the House waited in dead silence, he took a little sheaf of papers from his pocket, and, rising to his feet, turned his back on the throne so as to face the Members, and spoke.

‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘you have heard in silence and in dismay the communication I have read you from the throne. With what dismay I read it I cannot hope to picture to you. It is an anomaly that any speech should be made on a Bill introduced by the Crown except by the Crown itself, but I observe that Her Royal Highness’s Ministers have taken their places in the House. I sympathize with them, and though I suppose I have the right, as the Princess’s representative, to order that they go back to their places’—here an angry murmur arose from the gallery—‘I cannot find it in my heart to do so. I suspend the rule that no speech should be made but my own. In this I trust I am not disloyal to my beloved wife, whom I represent. I really cannot feel clear how she would act. I must use my judgment.

‘I do not know what manner of speech you expect from me,’ he continued. ‘Indeed, I scarcely know what to say, and yet I must tell you what is in my heart. At least I may claim your pity, for no man, I think, was ever in so terrible a position. Every word of that Bill was bitter to me, for, indeed—you hear my voice for the last time—the people of Rhodopé are very dear to me. But dearer is my love for my wife’—here his voice rose a little—‘the Princess Sophia, and dearer the little rag of loyalty which I can still keep, which nothing—no iron chains of circumstance, no monstrous necessity—can strip from me.’

The last words vibrated with intensest passion; they seemed instinct with truth and loyalty. The man was a great orator. He paused a moment, and went on more calmly:

‘But in justice to myself, though you shall all see which way my conscience commands me to vote as the representative of Her Royal Highness—in justice to myself, I must say a few words of exculpation. Believe me, I am altogether innocent of this stupendous error. Not one word have I exchanged with the Princess Sophia on this matter; she never consulted me on it, and perhaps wisely, for she must have known what I should feel. It is scarcely six months ago that she in person inaugurated the club, in the formation and execution of which I may, without boasting, claim no inconsiderable share. That club, so I am happy to think, has poured money like a snow-fed torrent into Rhodopé; many hundreds of the citizens have shares in it, which yield a percentage which no gold mine can rival. Indirectly how much more has it proved to have enriched us! Was not the capital last autumn one hive of visitors from other countries, bringing not only wealth to us, but an interchange of ideas, enlarging our horizons, making us feel that we had brethren from over-sea? And now what? This great building is to be closed, the visitors will come no more; they will leave our pine breezes for the languorous air of the Riviera, and we—we shall go back to the old life. Let me take a few figures to show you just what this means, dealing only with small items easy to understand. Last year there were eight restaurants and five hotels in Rhodopé, now there are forty-six restaurants and seventeen hotels completely open, and far more in course of construction. This increase is not profitable alone, nor even principally perhaps, to the enterprise of those who have started them. The farmer finds a readier market for his sheep, the vine-grower for his wines; there is not a single trade which has not profited largely by this. This increased prosperity has filtered through every minutest channel of our industries. Where sheep only fed on the mountain-side now resound the cries of the golfers, and the barren land north of Mavromáti fetches a rental of eighty pounds sterling as a links. Take, again, the case of the vine-grower. Such is the wonderful fertility of our soil, in other years we have often sent wine abroad, for the consumption at home is not equal to the supply. But now what do we see? Our vineyards cannot keep pace with the demand; we import much from France, from Germany, and the cheaper hotels, I am told, from California and Australia, and the duty swells our revenues. From this I hoped that we should advance even further, that more land would be taken into cultivation, more folk profitably employed. Alas, and alas, for my dreams!’

The House had been attentive when he began; now, you may say, they hung on hooks. It had not, at any rate, been expected that the Prince would express himself so unmistakably. A murmur of sympathetic applause rose and died and rose again. The tide of popular approval flowed in his favour; he at least was opposed to this measure. Malakopf alone was uneasy; he shifted in his seat, his quick brain sought handles in the Prince’s words, yet from every point he retired baffled. Petros, it is true, was creating an impression most unfavourable to Sophia. Malakopf had to do the same for him. The Presidency of the Republic still hung in the wavering balance.

‘I had hoped otherwise,’ continued Petros. ‘I had hoped to see the commerce of Europe pour into Rhodopé. Acre on acre of fruitful soil waits only for the cultivator to say “Sesame!” We are not a tax-ridden folk like Italy; our country, happier than England, produces more than unwholesome beer and unpayable corn. We wanted only the impetus to begin, for we are but at the beginning. The impetus we have had; what follows? Again Rhodopé will become a sealed land, a land of mountains and inhospitable ravines to the civilized world, a minor State, an insignificant Balkan province. Ah——’ and he stopped with a cleverly taken gulping breath.

Once more a murmur of more audible applause thrilled through the benches; sympathy seemed on the way to be warmed to boiling-point. Malakopf signed to the Prince to cease, but the latter took no notice, and the Prime Minister held himself in readiness to make his attack.

‘Two years ago—more than two years ago,’ continued Petros, speaking slowly and regretfully, ‘I first set eyes on your incomparable land. Many daydreams were mine. To the best of my poor ability I have striven to make them real. I have devoted my time, my powers, such as they are—but, oh, how gladly!—to contribute to the welfare of the country. I have had two thoughts only—loyalty to my wife, loyalty to my land—and now——’

Had the Prince and Malakopf had leisure to observe, they would have noticed that eyes and attention were no longer glued on them. The people of Rhodopé, always fond of drama, were having a delightful afternoon. A more palpable stillness had fallen on the House, and when Petros paused on the pathetic word, no sympathy thrilled the Assembly. But his great point was approaching, and it was too imminent for Malakopf to disregard. The unstable tide was setting too strongly for him not to interfere, and as he rose the Prince sat down in an assumed humility, and with a gesture to Malakopf to proceed.

‘I have a question to ask,’ grated out the Prime Minister. ‘The Princess Sophia is known to be tolerant to gambling, yet now she introduces a Bill condemning it. She shuts up the club she has opened—on whose suggestion? We are here in debate, a course unprecedented when the Crown introduces a Bill. That such a Bill should be opposed is beyond question, but who is the real author of it? Who but one has persuaded her to this course? Too long—I say it openly—have we suffered under the strange whims of the House of Ægina. Princess Sophia, as you all very well know, spends her days at Monte Carlo, yet she treats us like children, and would forbid us to gamble in Rhodopé. And has she never been seen at the tables? And how often is she seen in her place in this House? Who, after all, is the Prince Petros but the husband of the gambling Princess? Who, after all, is the Princess herself? Her place is here among us, but where is she?’ And looking round to face Petros, he faced also the throne, and his speech froze.

Petros sprang to his feet, determined, like Malakopf, to play his last card.

‘I, too, am no friend of the House of Ægina,’ he cried, ‘except in so far as I am the husband of the Princess. We want a ruler who will have the true interests of the nation at heart; we want——’

And he, too, seeing Malakopf stare open-eyed before him, stopped, then turned round, for Malakopf’s eyes were fixed not on him, but beyond.

The platform where stood the throne and the official seats of the Ministers was brilliantly lighted. On each side of the throne were three seats, untenanted, for the Ministers were all in the body of the House. On the throne sat Sophia, who had entered through the private door from the Palace. She was dressed in white brocade; round her neck were four strings of diamonds, conspicuous among which shone the Eastern gem; on her head was the great tiara, an heirloom of Rhodopé, and she wore all her Orders. She sat as still as the throne on which she was seated. She seemed to listen to the debate, for her head was bent a little forward, and her mouth was slightly parted, as if she would have something to say in reply. The sun, low to its setting, shone full on her through the window above the western door, and she was enveloped in a mantle of rose. The beauty of her was incomparable.

For a moment there was dead silence when the echo of Petros’s last words had died in the groining of the roof; then she raised her head a little, and in a voice of gold, ‘His Highness Prince Petros is addressing the House, gentlemen,’ she said.

Still dead silence, except for some woman in the gallery, who suddenly burst into a cackling hysterical laugh.

‘I should like to hear my husband continue his speech,’ she said, when the woman had stopped laughing.

Malakopf had sat down; Petros alone continued standing. Then Sophia rose, but the House, still open-mouthed, continued gazing at her. She drew herself up to her full height.

‘Gentlemen,’ she said; and they rose to their feet.

Without a shade of excitement in her face or hurry in her movement, as if the subject of the debate were of no concern to her, she walked across the platform, her train whispering behind her, and down to the Ministers’ bench. Petros was in the place she would occupy if taking part in the debate, and not even looking at him, she waved him aside with her hand.

‘Do not leave the House,’ she said. ‘I have heard your speech; you shall hear mine.’

Next Petros stood Malakopf, and the Princess swept by him with an air of ineffable disdain. In her hand she held the Bill Petros had just read out, and standing in her place she glanced through it, and her face flushed. Then, ‘Be seated, gentlemen,’ she said.

She still held the Bill in her hand, and when the House had seated itself she tore and tore it through and through, and again through, scattered the pieces on the ground, and burst into speech.

‘That for the Bill!’ she said—‘that for the Bill which falsely and impudently is before the House as my Bill. Before God, I never set eyes on the thing before, and I think you will read the truth of what I say if you look at the face of the Prime Minister on my left and on the face of my husband. It is one of the duties of Royalty to be punctual, and am I not divinely punctual? Oh, it is incredible!’ she cried—‘it is incredible that two men could be so infamous and so stupid! And I was to be the victim of this astounding conspiracy—I! Indeed, gentlemen, I am not in the humour to be a victim. You heard the Prince’s speech; he spoke of his loyalty to the interests of the country; he spoke, as I thought, very convincingly of the benefits the club had brought to our country; but above all, to cap his insolence, he spoke of his loyalty to me. Did a man ever hear the equal of that? Oh, Petros, you are unapproachable!’ and she looked at him for the first time.

Then she turned to Malakopf: ‘You spoke of the strange whims of the House of Ægina,’ she said. ‘The strangest of all their whims was on the day that you were made Prime Minister. I heard you ask, “Who, after all, is the Princess Sophia?” I, after all, am the Princess Sophia! “Where is the Princess Sophia?” you asked. Malakopf, I am here. In the name of my ancestors!’ she cried, pointing to the row of busts—‘in the name of my ancestors, Alexis Malakopf, I thank you for your loyalty to my House!’

Then, turning to the Chief Justice, ‘I impeach both these men on a charge of high treason against myself, Sophia, hereditary Princess of Rhodopé. Let them be removed from the House; they await their trial.’

They were removed in custody, and till they had vanished there was absolute silence in the House. Then Sophia rose again.

‘I intend,’ she said, ‘to make no further inquiry into this prodigiously futile attempt against the throne. Indeed, it is difficult to take such folly seriously, and were I not a little angry I should laugh. If any present was associated with that dismal couple we have seen leave the House, it is a matter for himself alone, and let him thank his Maker that I heard no more speeches on the subject. This Bill, not being introduced by me, falls to the ground. And now, gentlemen, for a pleasanter task. I am here according to immemorial custom to thank my Ministers and the Members of this House for the services they have rendered to me and to my country during this past year. We have seen the revenues increase and multiply during the last eight months; never, I think, has Rhodopé been in so prosperous a condition. I thank you, gentlemen, from my heart for your services.’

She curtsied right and left to the members of the Assembly, and then stood a moment silent.

‘One thing more only,’ she said. ‘The customary New Year fêtes will take place as usual, and Prince Petros’s list of invitations is mine. Gentlemen, the House is prorogued.’

Flesh and blood could stand it no longer; Sophia’s appearance at such a moment, the magnificence of her beauty, her royalty of demeanour, would have made a man dumb from his birth to shout. The Minister of the Interior leaped on to his brocaded chair like a schoolboy, and the Chief Justice, being stout, mounted on to his as if it had been a horse.

‘Three cheers, and another and another, for the beloved Princess Sophia!’ he cried, waving his three-cornered hat.

The scene was indecorous in the extreme. Some jumped on to their chairs, others on to the table; they pounded the ground with sticks and stamped and yelled. The chair of the Chief Justice collapsed under him, but those near said he continued cheering even at the moment his head came into sharp collision with the marble floor. The gallery was one open mouth, roaring. It had already got about the town that the Princess had come back, and when she appeared at the main door leading into the square, where her carriage was waiting for her, a sea of faces met her. As the door was opened the shouts of those inside streamed out like a river, and, like the sea, the voices of the crowd outside swallowed them up. In a moment her horses were unharnessed, and the folk fought and pushed for a place between the shafts. Indeed Sophia had come back.

CHAPTER XI.

A FOOL LEAVES RHODOPÉ.

But it ever grew in volume, and the noise was getting nearer. Uncontrollable curiosity gained on them, and, rising, each questioned the eyes of the others. Soon the shouting, like some tide on the flow, reached the courtyard of the Palace, and a moment later the doors of the great reception-room, where they were awaiting the coming of the Prince, for the dinner-hour was now long past, were thrown open by the major-domo, and to the incredible surprise of all—for she had dressed at the English Legation—Sophia entered.

The Princess had no idea who formed the house-party which Petros had invited for the New Year fêtes, but in the very flush of her triumph it did not seem to her possible that there might be an awkward moment in front of her. But had she known what presences that door flung wide would show, even she might have paused. But, smiling, and on fire with the music of the shouting, she sailed into the room. Just in front of her, imminent and encompassing as a nightmare, stood Petros’s mother, Princess Caroline of Herzegovina.

That remarkable lady was English, of overwhelming size, and she always denied ever having been a barmaid at the Alhambra Theatre. She was dressed—or you would rather say bound—in a ruby velvet gown, her ornaments were cairngorms and turquoises, and her fan was of ostrich feathers dyed pink. To her Prince Petros, in a moment of unguarded confidence, had hinted at the upshot of this night’s work, and when she saw Sophia her voluminous bodice remained expanded with a quick-taken breath, and the two for a moment looked at each other in silence. Sophia recovered herself first.

‘Oh, I am even as delighted and surprised to see you, dear Princess,’ she cried, ‘as you are to see me. I appear like the man in the moon, do I not? It is ages since we met. Where is Petros, you ask me? Petros is detained;’ and she passed on, shaking hands, to her other guests, mistress of herself and her house.

The Princess Caroline’s face was a fine study for a man who was bold enough to look at her. Her black, swarthy eyebrows meeting over her large, parrot-like nose grew knotted with thought; she could not doubt but that something had happened. What could this return of Sophia amid acclamation and welcome portend? Where was Petros, who a few hours ago had gone to the Assembly, tremulous, yet hopeful? Malakopf, too? Malakopf was to have dined at the Palace to-night. He had not come, and already Sophia had passed through the folding dining-room doors, and the others were following. The arrangement of the table had been thrown hopelessly out of gear by these alterations, but Sophia did not have Malakopf’s chair removed. She herself, with an extraordinary naturalness of manner, talked and laughed and ate and drank heartily and with great enjoyment, and Princess Caroline grew momently more thunderous in aspect and more apprehensive.

The dinner had been later than usual, and it was nearly ten when the dessert was put on. Suddenly Sophia rose.

‘I must beg the attention of all of you a moment,’ she said. ‘You will probably hear a strange story when we go to the ball to-night, and it is as well that you should hear the truth of it from me, though in outline only. I have come back just in time to nip in the bud a plot against the House of Ægina, against me and my son. The authors of the plot are consequently unable to attend. Let us rise from table, your Royal Highnesses, my lords and ladies.’

Princess Caroline wavered a moment, then threw herself, fan, eyebrows and all, at Sophia’s feet.

‘Oh, have pity!’ she cried, and in her emotion her breeding had its way. ‘Poor Petros never meant any ‘arm. Oh my! I don’t know what I shall do! Where is poor Petros? Oh, let me go to him!’

Sophia motioned to her other guests to leave the room, and they were left alone.

‘My poor dear Princess,’ she said, ‘Petros has made a tragic ass of himself! He has been quite incredibly foolish and wicked. I am very sorry, but I gave him a warning before, and he would not take it. Oh, don’t cry so! He will not have his head cut off; but he will never sit any more close to the throne of Rhodopé, because he tried to occupy the seat. Yes, you shall see him to-morrow. You will not come to the fête to-night, of course? I really am very sorry for you. Oh, please get up! Your tiara has fallen off.’

Prince Petros—and herein was a sting—had ordered the fête on a scale of unexampled magnificence to celebrate the events of the afternoon. These events had turned out somewhat wide of his conjecture, but the magnificence of the fête was unimpaired, and very fitly commemorated Sophia’s return. He had planned an enthusiastic reception of himself and Malakopf. Sophia took their place, but the enthusiasm of the welcome fully came up to his imaginings.

The High Court of Justice met early the next week to try Prince Petros and Malakopf. It was not difficult to find witnesses for the prosecution, for the whole House had heard Malakopf’s public repudiation of the House of Ægina, and Prince Petros, wise for once, when asked whether or no he was guilty of high treason against his wife, the Princess Sophia, pleaded guilty, hoping thereby for a mitigation of his sentence. The Lord Chief Justice, as he was bound to do, pronounced sentence of perpetual imprisonment at the Princess’s pleasure, and, without ordering the removal of the prisoners from the dock, sent, in accordance with the procedure of the Court of Rhodopé, a message to her, to say that he had done his duty, and waited for the confirmation of the sentence. She had also petitioned the Court for a separation between herself and her husband, and this, of course, was granted her.

Sophia had spared the two the humiliation of a public trial, and the case was tried in camera, there being present only the jury, sufficient witnesses to establish the accusation, the judge, and the counsel for and against the prisoners. In a few moments, however, the door to the judge’s private rooms opened, and Sophia herself entered.

The Chief Justice immediately vacated his place, and all remained standing till Sophia had seated herself. She was dressed in black, her face was very stern, and Petros, looking thereon, felt his hopes die.

But she spoke first, not to him, but to Malakopf.

‘Alexis Malakopf, prisoner at the bar,’ she said, ‘Prime Minister of my Government, you have been found guilty of high treason, and for you I have no pity. I heard your words spoken in the Assembly, I heard your astounding insults and repudiation of our Royal House. How is it possible for me to mitigate your sentence? You are not young, you have not been led away by another; you are old, and you are wicked. Long ago I knew what you were planning, long ago you made a boast that my husband was but the glove which covered your hand. Do you remember your words? I see that you do. I may have been unwise—I have been unwise in many things—but I have ever dealt frankly with you. I will hear if you have anything to say in your defence. But if you have any self-respect left, I cannot conjecture what you will say.’

There was silence in the court.

‘So be it,’ said Sophia at length; ‘as you have sown, so shall you reap. You have been accused of high treason to my house, you have been found guilty. Your crime is the more odious in that you must needs act through another; you must needs make my unhappy husband your tool. You have done a monstrous thing. The sentence of the Court is confirmed, and for the remainder of your days you are confined in our prison at Amandos.’

Malakopf was removed, and when he had gone Sophia turned to Petros.

‘Oh, Petros,’ she said, leaning forward, and speaking so that he alone could clearly hear her, ‘have I deserved this of you? What had I done that you could treat me so? Was it not your place rather to reason with me, if you thought I was acting unwisely for my people? If you thought I ought to have been more sedulous in my duties, should you not have told me so? Yes, you will say that I did not give a very patient ear to you, and thus the fault is partly mine, and I own it. But no good fruit ever came out of disloyalty, and even if your infamous plan had succeeded, the fruit would have been an apple from the Dead Sea, dust and ashes to your mouth. Perhaps this is no time to make reproaches, but we shall not meet again, my poor Petros, and what I have to say to you must be said now.’

She stopped a moment; her voice was soft with tears, and trembled. The unhappy man had covered his face with his hands, and his shoulders shook with his sobbing.

‘Petros,’ she went on, ‘what a change is here, since when you came so gallantly to Amandos, since we sat all night at bezique, since we rode to the review, and raced home! We have not made a very successful marriage, and I blame myself, believe me, as much as you. But that it should come to this! There I blame you. Did I not warn you? Have the justice to admit that I warned you when I told you that you were no Napoleon. Jesting words, no doubt; but you are not slow, and you saw what I meant. Oh, I know well that you saw what I meant. Again, when I left Mavromáti, did I not say that I trusted you to the utmost? I could think of nothing which should have been so tonic as that. If there had been one seed of loyalty in you, those words should have warmed and watered it.’

Petros raised his head.

‘Before God, Sophia,’ he cried, ‘I never thought——’

She shook her head.

‘Do not say that,’ she said, ‘for you did think. You must have calculated long and carefully. I should, I think, have forgiven you if you had in some sudden exasperation tried to cut my throat, for I know how exasperating I must often have been; but this scheming and cold-blooded conspiracy, it beats me! I cannot understand it. My poor friend, I do not mean to mock at you, but you would have been a more successful figure to-day if you had stuck to your riding and your bezique. Good-bye, Petros; we shall not meet again. You shall know how Leonard grows up.’

He buried his face in his hands, unable to look at her, waiting only for the confirmation of his sentence. Sophia paused, allowing her emotion to quiet itself, and then spoke in a firm voice:

‘The separation granted by the court between Prince Petros and myself is confirmed,’ she said. ‘But the Crown, having pity for the Prince’s youth, and bearing in mind that he was no more than the tool of another, commutes his sentence of perpetual imprisonment to perpetual banishment from the realm of Rhodopé. He is free to go and to do as he will outside our dominions. He will leave Mavromáti this afternoon in the royal yacht Felatrune, to the commander of which orders shall be given to go where the Prince directs. He will be removed secretly, so that no public disrespect shall be shown him. I thank you, my Lord Chief Justice and gentlemen. The court is adjourned.’

She stepped down from the Bench, and went to the front of the dock, holding out her hand.

‘Good-bye, Petros,’ she said, and with a sudden flood of tears he bent and kissed it.

CHAPTER XII.

THE EDUCATION OF THE HEIR-APPARENT.

Prince Leonard early exhibited that same craving for diversion and excitement which had made the childhood of his mother so full of incident to her teachers. He could not, as she had done, request reluctant tutors to elope with him, but he made their lives burdensome by a scientific curiosity to observe their conduct under such trying circumstances as the cold aspersion of unsuspected booby-traps. Indeed, such was the continuous pressure of his animal spirits, and his greed of adventure, that the gentlemen who held these brief appointments were as precariously situated as engine-drivers the boilers of whose machines might be expected momentarily to burst. He was an excellent rider, born to the saddle, and at the age of eleven his handicap at golf was only nine. He had a fanatical abhorrence of his lessons, and his natural linguistic powers, and the royal birthright of memory, made whatever intellectual task he was good enough to undertake extremely easy to him. He had the fair skin and dark hair of his mother, and in the whole realm of Rhodopé there was not a more lovable or so unmanageable a boy.

When he was just thirteen, he indulged in a series of escapades that made Sophia take him seriously. The first of these was that he challenged, fought with, and wrought havoc upon the pasty person of the son of the Mayor of Amandos, an act undignified in one of his station, and performed in a manner distressingly public. The two, stripped to their shirts and trousers, had fought three rounds in the square in front of the cathedral, while Sophia, with whom Leonard had been driving to a public function, paid a call of condolence on the wife of the Mayor, a victim to neuralgia. The Princess and she had been sitting in a room overlooking the square, when the hubbub from outside, and shouts of ‘Go it, Prince Leonard! Three to one on the Prince!’ caused them simultaneously to rise, and run in apprehensive haste to the window. The carriage, which had waited in the street, was tenantless, the Prince’s hat and sailor jacket were lying in the road, a crowd of street-boys made an enthusiastic ring, and the heir-apparent to the throne had his opponent’s head comfortably in chancery. The wife of the Mayor gazed but for one moment, and then shrieking out, ‘The monster! he will kill my child!’ rushed distractedly from the room. Sophia followed, and on the stairs ran into the boy’s tutor, who, being totally unable to stop him fighting, had very sensibly hastened to tell his mother. The Mayoress bore her battered offspring away, and Sophia returned to the carriage with Leonard.

‘Oh, mother, didn’t I give it him!’ cried the boy. ‘My knuckles are quite sore with hitting his great head. He couldn’t have lasted another round.’

‘Put on your jacket at once, Leonard,’ said his mother sternly. ‘You, the Prince, fighting in the public street! I wonder you are not ashamed!’

‘But I couldn’t help it,’ cried Leonard. ‘I had to fight him. He said things about you.’

‘Don’t talk so loud, Leonard,’ said Sophia. ‘Tell me what he said.’

‘He said that you were the most notor—notorious—he always uses words a yard long—the most notorious gambler in Rhodopé; so, of course, I said he lied, and would he fight or take a licking? Indeed, he did both.’

His mother flushed with pleasure, but she sighed at the end.

‘I’m afraid he was near the mark, Lennie,’ she said.

‘But what is notorious?’ asked Leonard, ‘I didn’t know what he meant, but, anyhow, it was calling you names.’

‘It means the most regular,’ said Sophia.

Leonard considered a moment with his head on one side.

‘That doesn’t sound very bad,’ he said; ‘but, anyhow, he had no business to say so. No. I’m glad I fought him. Lord, how sore he will be!’

He smoothed his ruffled hair, and put his hat on.

‘I suppose it is true that you are at the club pretty often?’ he continued. ‘Mother, will you take me there sometimes? I have never been.’

Sophia felt suddenly serious and responsible.

‘No; never,’ she said with energy. ‘Promise me you will never go. I certainly shall not take you there; it is no place for you.’

‘Then, some day I shall go without you,’ remarked Leonard.

Sophia was so anxious that he should not—why, it perhaps would have puzzled her to say, except that she vaguely pictured his fresh young face looking singularly out of place in that gas-lit assembly—that she did her best to persuade him to promise that he would never set foot in the club, but unavailingly. The more she urged, the more Leonard’s desire to go increased.

‘And,’ as he remarked with candour, ‘I shan’t make a promise, because then I should feel obliged to keep it.’

So at last she desisted, feeling she would have been wiser not to have urged, and hoping that the boy would forget about it; for she would sooner he fought the Mayor’s son than cut his gambling teeth, and, indeed, the history of their quarrel had warmed her heart.

Two evenings afterwards she was sitting at her usual place on the right of Pierre, playing roulette. She was enjoying a rare run of luck, and her stakes were recklessly high. She had just placed the limit on a single number, when, looking up, she saw opposite her a young girl seated at the table watching the game with flushed and wide-eyed interest. She turned to Blanche Amesbury, who was sitting next her.

‘Look at that pretty child opposite,’ she said. ‘But what a way to dress a girl! She must be the daughter of that English brewer peer. What refined types you meet among the bourgeois! How its dear little heart is in the game! Yet it seems almost a shame to bring it here—this is no place for children—but the nouveaux riches are always horrible. Why—— Oh, good gracious me! it’s Leonard.’

Leonard caught the sound of his name, and looked up for a fraction of a second.

‘Oh, a moment—a moment!’ he cried. ‘Fourteen, fifteen—— Hurrah! sixteen wins. Good old sixteen! I wish I had staked on a single number instead of the half-dozen.’

He had been so absorbed in the game that for a moment he did not notice his self-betrayal, nor the shout of laughter which followed; but now he stood there in all the conscious shame of his girl’s dress. He blushed up to the roots of his hair, and pushed his way confusedly out of the room, forgetting even to take with him what he had won on the last roll.

Sophia tried to look grave and unconscious, but in a few seconds the corners of her mouth broke down, and she leaned back in her chair with peal after peal of laughter.

‘Oh, I could never have invented so divinely apt a punishment!’ she cried. ‘Leonard detected in a girl’s dress, and before all the people! Indeed, that is an instance of the fierce light that beats upon a throne. Oh, how furious he will be! I wonder where he got his costume. His hat—oh, my dear Blanche! his hat! It was like Covent Garden on a summer’s morning—a cargo of flowers and nameless vegetables. Oh, I cannot stop; I must go and rub the lesson in. He has a horror of making himself ridiculous. Perhaps this will cure him for awhile.’

Sophia went straight back to the Palace, where the servants were all agape to see her return so early, and to Leonard’s room. He had got there only a moment before her, since she had taken the short-cut through the private door in the Palace garden, and he was tearing the detected finery from him. On his bed lay the hat, a perfect garden of magenta roses and sage-green ribbons, and he was even then wrestling with the hooks and eyes of the bodice. The boy stamped his foot angrily when he saw her, and his cheeks were redder than the roses in his hat and infinitely more healthy in tone.

‘Why did you make a fool of me, mother,’ he cried, ‘before all those people? I shall never be able to go to the Casino again. It was brutal of you, and I was enjoying myself so much.’

Sophia burst out laughing.

‘Dear Lennie, what a lovely hat!’ she cried. ‘Where did you get it? I shall order one like it, and we will go driving together in them. Do you propose to wear that dress always instead of your sailor clothes? It is not very well cut. As for my making a fool of you, I think you are more to blame than I. How could you do such a thing!’

‘It was your fault,’ cried he. ‘I had forgotten everything in the game. Oh, these strings! I think the devil made them.’

‘And a fool tied them,’ said Sophia. ‘Here, let me do them for you. I thought the dress did not fit very well, and no wonder, if you had your shirt on under the bodice and your trousers under the skirt. And where are your stays? It is all your fault, Leonard; I told you not to go to the club.’

‘I hope you didn’t think I was going to obey you?’ said Leonard, with singular contempt.

‘Anyhow, you thought fit to disobey me—oh, don’t wriggle so!—and you have been very properly paid out for it. You are too young to gamble. My poor boy! every shopkeeper in Rhodopé is laughing at you this moment, and I’m sure I don’t wonder. For me, I have never been so nearly hysterical; I was helpless with laughter. I told you you were too young to gamble, and you would not take my word for it. You have been very naughty and disobedient, and you made a thorough exhibition of yourself—within three days to fight in the streets and to dress up as Polly to go to the Casino. Oh, that hat! What a creation!’ and she began to laugh again. ‘I thought you were one of the bourgeois.’

Leonard stepped out of the skirt, and pulled down his trousers, which he had rolled up to the knees over his sturdy calves, and regarded his mother critically.

‘I say, mother, you know you must have begun pretty young, too,’ he said. ‘The earliest thing I can remember is being told you were the finest gambler in Europe. I watched you playing to-night. You played very quietly, and by your face a man could not tell whether you had won or lost. Is that the chic way to gamble?’

‘That is the only way to gamble,’ said she, forgetting for a moment the moral lesson. ‘I have seen men and women tremble so that they could scarcely pick up their winnings. Whatever you do, always keep quiet at the tables. There is no such test of decent breeding.’

‘You must teach me,’ said Leonard insidiously. ‘We might play for—for counters at first, quietly, at home.’

‘That would be very amusing,’ remarked his mother, ‘and roulette for two would certainly be a novelty; but I don’t want you to grow up a gambler, Leonard.’

‘Yet to-night I found it very entertaining; and did not you grow up a gambler?’ said he. ‘Also, it seemed to me easy, which is an advantage.’

‘Easy! There is no such word. There is good luck and bad luck; that is all the vocabulary.’

‘When did you first begin playing?’ asked he.

‘When I was too young.’

‘Then, I expect that was a very long time ago,’ said the boy; ‘for I do not see how you can begin too early;’ and with this the conversation closed. Sophia, as may have been detected, could never have been predestined to attain to eminence as a disciplinarian, and Leonard’s tutors, like her own, proved about equally inefficient in managing him. One after another were surveyed by the boy, and judged wanting. One could not ride, another could not shoot, a third wore spectacles, and topped his drives with unique regularity; but one and all joined hands in this, that they were totally unable to make him learn except when he chose to learn, or to exercise the slightest discipline over him out of lesson hours, and very little in.

Sophia soon grew considerably exercised about the boy. She had begun to see that the atmosphere of the Palace of Amandos was not entirely wholesome. He was not disciplined in any way, which she considered the worst preparation for a lad who would one day be an autocratic Sovereign. She compared the escapades of her own youth with his, and had to confess that she, at any rate, had been a little in awe of her father. She had often revolted, but with an uneasy feeling that consequences might follow, and thus disobedience had its drawbacks. Leonard, on the other hand, disobeyed her whistling, with his tongue in his cheek, and to him disobedience never seemed to bring with it any drawbacks at all. By the time she saw him next she would have forgotten about the incident, or if she remembered it, and began a little homily, Leonard would shut his eyes, turn down the corners of his mouth, and, with an air inexpressibly comic, say, ‘Let us pray.’ Once she had instructed Mr. Lanthony, the tutor with the spectacles, not without much inward misgiving, to use the cane to Leonard next time punishment was necessary, and, such an occasion occurring within an hour of the edict, Leonard had thrown a copy of Magnall’s Questions at Mr. Lanthony’s face when he produced the cane with so much precision that his spectacles were dashed into a thousand fragments, and his eyes gushed out with involuntary water. His mother had not told the boy that the proposed caning was consonant to her orders, and Leonard came to her in much indignation.

‘Mother,’ he cried, ‘you couldn’t guess what has happened if you tried a hundred times: that old giglamps said he would cane me this morning—me!’ and he tapped his waistcoat.

‘I am convinced you deserved it,’ said his mother calmly.

‘And I am convinced that his spectacles will never be fit to see through again,’ retorted Leonard, angry at finding her so unsympathetic.

‘Leonard, what have you done?’ she said.

‘I threw Magnall’s Questions at him hard,’ he said; ‘and thus his spectacles are not worth anything now.’

‘You wicked boy!’ cried his mother. ‘It was I who told Mr. Lanthony to cane you. You are very naughty and mischievous, and you must go and beg Mr. Lanthony’s pardon, and take your caning like a man; and your pocket-money shall be stopped to pay for his spectacles.’

Down went the corners of Leonard’s mouth.

‘Oh, dear!’ he sighed; ‘let us pray; but get it over quick.’

In effect Mr. Lanthony had to do without the apology, and Prince Leonard without his caning; but the tutor had an interview with Sophia, and, after tendering his resignation, ventured to offer a word of advice.

‘I should lose no time in sending him to Eton,’ he said.

‘Who is Eton?’ asked his mother.

Mr. Lanthony was frankly horrified.

‘Eton is a school, your Royal Highness,’ he replied; ‘in fact, it is the school. It seems strange to an Englishman to find even in Rhodopé that Eton is unknown; but “Non cuivis attingit adire Corinthum.”’

‘I beg your pardon?’ said Sophia politely.

‘I merely said Eton was a school,’ said Mr. Lanthony.

‘I think I have heard of it, now I consider,’ said Sophia. ‘It is near Windsor, is it not? What does one do? Shall I take a house for him, or will he live in London, and go down for an hour or two every day?’

‘That will not be necessary,’ replied Mr. Lanthony. ‘The house, on the other hand, will take him;’ and he sketched to the Princess the main features of a public school.

‘Yes, it sounds nice,’ she said vaguely; ‘but he is, as you know, so high-spirited. Will they try to cane him there? I tremble to think what will happen—dear me! your eye is bad, Mr. Lanthony—if the headmaster tries to cane him.’

Mr. Lanthony gave the ghost of a smile. His mouth was untouched by Magnall’s Questions.

‘I don’t think you need consider that, your Royal Highness,’ he said—‘at least, you need not be uneasy for the headmaster; nor, indeed, for the Prince—the birch is quite harmless.’

‘The birch!’ cried Sophia. ‘How terrible it sounds!’

‘It is of no consequence,’ said Mr. Lanthony gravely; and the pain of Magnall’s Questions grew sensibly less.

‘Well, we must ask Leonard,’ said his mother. ‘Supposing he refuses to go? What are we to do then? I don’t think either of us has much influence with him, you know.’

But Leonard, when appealed to, was considerably taken with the idea; there would be a lot of boys to play with, and he wanted to go to England.

‘I expect it’s more fun with heaps of other boys than with one old muff at a time,’ he said. ‘Yes, I’ll be an Eton boy.’

When Sophia had made up her mind to a thing, she was not slow to put it into execution. She wrote an exceedingly kind and condescending letter to the headmaster, giving him to understand that she was prepared to confer this priceless boon on Eton at Mr. Lanthony’s recommendation; but that gentleman, to whom she read it, advised another tone. The headmaster was radically-minded, and would not be likely to be dazzled at the prospect; she could put it more simply. Indeed, perhaps it would be better if he wrote himself to a housemaster he knew there, asking if he could by any means secure a vacancy in his house for a boy aged fourteen, or if he knew of anyone else who had a vacancy. All this sounded terribly democratic to the Princess; but, having failed so signally herself with Leonard, she was desirous that other more practised hands should take the reins from her, and she would, so she expressed herself with a little acidity, go down on her knees before all the masters in Christendom if this were the more proper attitude to take.

It was finally arranged that Leonard should enter the school in April, and Sophia threw herself with zest into the scheme. She conferred on his housemaster the Second Order of the Bronze Cross, and sent him the key to a private cipher, by means of which he could daily communicate with her. She asked whether £1,000 pocket-money a term would be sufficient to supply her boy with school requisites, and whether she should open an account for him at the Eton and Windsor Bank. She hoped they would all remember—perhaps he would be so good as to speak to his colleagues about it—how exceedingly high-spirited the Prince was, and how little discipline he had yet received. Finally, she drove the unfortunate man to the verge of imbecility by saying that she hoped they allowed no roulette at all in the school, and only vingt-et-un at moderate points. Mr. Lanthony had already left for England before this unhappy series of letters was despatched, or some of them might have been averted.

Leonard left for England at the end of March, and it was in a way an immense relief to his mother when he had gone, for she felt strangely responsible for his education. She had made up her mind that he was to be a good ruler, and she saw clearly that Rhodopé was no place for him yet. Her own popularity had redeemed, so far, her reign from failure, but she was candid enough to allow that she might have let her sphere border more nearly on usefulness. Prince Petros’s mad attempt had been an unexampled piece of luck; it had given her an éclat she could scarcely have won otherwise, so also had her institution of the club. She had founded it to supply amusement to herself; she found that she had given occupation to her people. But already she foresaw that in the course of years the morals of the people would deteriorate, the hardy mountain folk would become people of the asphalt, of the gaslight. As long as the club continued to act as a star for the enjoyment of health-questing moths, so long, no doubt, would the Budget of Rhodopé be a pattern to other more puritanically constituted States; but the surplus on the Budget would be paid for in other ways. She saw the sheep of Rhodopé without their shepherds; she saw the vineyards without their vine-diggers; she dimly forecast the army destitute of privates, and peopled only with honorary colonels. She had the grace to shudder at the logical outcome of the era she had instituted, only she could not in her own person break the chain of circumstance on which it hung. Amandos without the club! She starved at the thought. It had been bad enough before; now, when the days there had actually ceased to be tedious, owing to the diversions supplied by her roulette, with what a cold shuddering of the spirit she saw herself shorn of that which made life tolerable! But that chain of circumstances should be broken by her son. She had endowed him with the gambling blood, but that was inevitable; at least she was now making an effort whereby the hereditary instinct should not come to fruition. She had sent him to England, that home of three-penny points; she had expressed herself most clearly to his housemaster at Eton on the question of roulette. She could not have done more, and her conscience approved her.

Meantime, throughout the length and breadth of Europe her reputation had gone abroad. Her great coup, now eleven years ago, which had steadied the tottering House of Ægina, had taken hold on the popular imagination, and the boldness and dash of the move had raised up in real hosts those unknown admirers which so many of those who act in public secretly and mistakenly suppose are theirs. That return from Corfu, triumphant over a riotous and wrecking sea, the cross-country sledge journey, the arrival in the nick of time, the hopeless and utter defeat of her husband and the acuter Malakopf, her rapturous welcome by the people, were all things to enkindle the blood in an age in which diplomatic papers are sufficient to set the world blazing. She was a picturesque figure, and an unpicturesque epoch has always this saving grace, that it delights in picturesque figures when they do appear. However much we may live environed by gray and green, a vivider tint is ever applauded. Again, she was admirably posed. To the eye of Europe she went stake in hand from the roulette-board to the rescue of her House, and having saved her House, went back to where the ball was still rolling and won. She had dash and brilliance and beauty, she was neither prude nor puritan. Indeed, she seemed one of those to whom success comes as if by birthright.

But with the instinct of a true gambler, she called her own success a run of luck. Sooner or later, unless her line staked on another colour, it would go against them, and her resolution to reform took the shape of reforming, or rather putting on the other colour, her son, Prince Leonard. She was determined, at the sacrifice of her natural desire, to see him but seldom; he should be a stranger to the tables of Rhodopé and the Riviera; he should play cricket and polo and hockey—whatever that was—instead of bezique and baccarat. She was herself so warm an admirer of the open air, that she felt she was not starving him. Had she not been a Princess, she would have chosen to be a man and a dweller in the mountains. Horses and dogs, a keen eye, and an obedient hand, were admirable things, and good enough for anybody.

For the next few years Leonard did not set foot in Rhodopé at all, and he saw his mother occasionally only, in her short and scarce visits to England. At Eton the high spirit which his mother had feared would be a source of possible danger to the head had shown itself reasonable, and in the course of one painful interview between the two, of which the cause was tobacco, and the end the birch, no books had been thrown. He did the minimum of work required with cheerfulness, if not zest, and, far more important, he was immensely popular with his fellows. He grew tall and strong on the banks of the Thames. At the age of sixteen he got into the eleven, and in the match against Harrow cracked the enamelled face of the clock at Lord’s off a half-volley just outside his leg-stump. He also indulged in various other amusements, which as yet had not come to light, but which appeared in damning concourse very shortly indeed before he left.

One morning in July he went into his room after twelve to change for cricket. On the table were two letters—one from his mother, who told him that she was on her way to England, and would arrive at the end of the month. She would stay a few days in London, and if Eton had broken up he had better come to her there. It was long since she had been in London, and they would see the sights together, from the Westminster Aquarium to the Tower of London, and from Madame Tussaud’s even to the Zoological Gardens and the Adelphi Theatre. There was no harm, she said, in a little gaiety, and she did not wish to cut Leonard off from all amusements. The other letter was from a groom of some training stables, and it interested him far more, for it gave the best possible account of Muley Moloch, a horse which Leonard was backing heavily for the Eclipse Stakes at Sandown. Accordingly at the end of the half Leonard went up to London to join his mother. She had taken a great suite of rooms at the Hôtel Métropole, with a private entrance, where she lived under her usual incognito of the Countess of Ægina.

Leonard arrived late in the evening, and found her with a few friends playing baccarat. His mother threw down her cards when he entered.

‘Dearest Leonard!’ she cried; ‘but I should scarcely have known you. How you have grown, and how you have improved! I am so delighted to see you again! Have you dined?’

Indeed, any mother might have been proud of him. He had grown up tall, well-looking, and with an extraordinary frankness and charm of manner. Though he was still but seventeen, he looked almost a man, and Princess Sophia felt how wise she had been to send him to school.

‘I have dined,’ he said, after being introduced to his mother’s guests. ‘And if you will let me, mother, I will join you in your game. Baccarat, is it not? A good game.’

‘Oh, Leonard, what business have you to know that!’ cried his mother. ‘I particularly asked that no baccarat should be allowed at Eton.’

Leonard laughed.

‘It is strictly prohibited,’ he said; ‘every boy at Eton will tell you so. Do not blame the masters. Will you lend me some money, mother?’

Though the Princess would have preferred that he should not play at all, she had the consolation of that he played well. His face was a mask of good breeding, not an eyelash betrayed emotion, and he looked gravely amused whether he won or lost.

‘He is a born gambler. It is in the blood, you know,’ she said under her breath to her cousin, the Duchess of Winchester, who was sitting next to her, and the Duchess thought she detected pride and not regret alone in her voice.

Mother and son, as arranged, went out the next days to see the sights of London. To the Princess it seemed to have grown sadder and foggier since she had seen it last. Their expeditions were mostly made on foot, for the Princess loved the bustle and stir of the streets, and more than once they made the top of an omnibus their observatory.

‘There are plenty of people, certainly,’ she said one day to Leonard, as they swayed and rolled up Baker Street; ‘and I love crowds. But observe their infinite sadness of demeanour. What a load of responsibility seems to rest on the least and meanest shoulders! Look at that baker there! If he was in Rhodopé I would make him Court undertaker. To what genuine melancholy is he the prey! If I was responsible for the whole creation, I should not be so sad. And they all walk so fast, as if they were going to catch the dying words of a near and dear relative, and would only just get there in time. After all, I am glad I am a Southerner. We may not be so good, but we are certainly gayer. And it is certainly good to be gay.’

They stopped at the corner where Madame Tussaud’s red exhibition stood, and Leonard, who for some minutes had been with difficulty restraining his laughter, suddenly burst out into a great shout of amusement.

‘England, at any rate, has not made you sad at present,’ said the Princess. ‘What is the matter, Leonard?’

‘Oh, nothing,’ said the lad; ‘at least, you will soon know.’

She paid their entrance-money—Leonard tossed his mother who should pay for both, and won—and began the tour of the room. Suddenly the Princess gave a little exclamation of horrified surprise, and rapidly turned up No. 27 in the catalogue. What met her indignant eye was this:

‘The gambling Princess Sophia.—Princess Sophia of Rhodopé, though only just forty, is surely the most rankly notorious crowned head of Europe. She spends the greater part of every day in the club she has started at the capital, Amandos, and the era of gambling she has introduced is rapidly undermining the physique and morale of her little kingdom. She has confined her old Prime Minister, Malakopf, a financier of European reputation, to a life-long imprisonment for some imaginary plot against the throne; and her husband, Prince Petros of Herzegovina, she has divorced and banished from the principality of Rhodopé. He is described by those who knew him as a man of charming manner and quick insight. The Princess has a violent temper and is growing very stout. Her only son, Prince Leonard, is at school at Eton.’

The room was almost empty, and Leonard put no bounds to his amusement. He stamped and choked, his mouth was full of laughter.

‘Oh, oh!’ he cried, ‘it is too funny! And, mother, I hear they are thinking of sending you to the Chamber of Horrors. I stayed in London last long leave and saw it. Oh, oh, the Chamber of Horrors, with murderers and Phœnix Park tragedians and people who have their throats cut in their baths. Oh, I shall burst!’

Sophia turned icily from him, read the description of herself through again in the catalogue, and then examined the figure. It was seated in the most realistic pose in front of a small green-cloth table. One hand held three or four playing-cards, the other was clutched on a heap of counterfeit coins. It represented her in full evening dress, with the Order of the Silver Cross and the Salamander on her shoulder, both faultlessly executed. Her dress was of white brocade, and it might have been copied by Worth himself, so she thought, from the gown which she had worn on the night of her memorable and unexpected home-coming. The pasty, formless fingers glittered with immense glass jewels; she wore a tiara of diamonds, and a copy in some cheap and tawdry material of the Rhodopé pearls.

But it was the presentment of the face that most appalled the Princess. The likeness was unmistakable, yet it was the most prodigious parody. She herself was pleasantly furnished with flesh, the waxwork bulged with fatness. Her own black eyes, with their long lashes, became wicked lakes of darkness, her fine-lipped mouth was moulded into evil and monstrous curves. Avarice sat enthroned in her greedy expression and in the clutching hand.

The Princess examined it with scrupulous care, then turned with a petrified face to Leonard, who was wiping his eyes. Every now and then a fresh gust of laughter shook him, and he held his aching ribs for fear they should burst. Sophia watched him a moment with malignity; it seemed yet doubtful whether she would run her parasol through the face of the waxwork, or box his ears; but by degrees the infection of his merriment caught her, and sitting down by him on a crimson-covered ottoman, she gave way to peal after peal of laughter. He had been on the verge of recovery, but they mutually infected one another, and in a few moments were equally lost to all power of speech, and could only point feebly and shakingly, as they shook and rolled on the sofa, at the greedy and clutching figure of the waxwork. A few more people had come into the gallery, and were attracted by this convulsed couple, but, with the supercilious contempt with which the English regard merriment in which they do not share, passed them by. Close at hand, however, sat the figure of the gambling Princess, and one by one they glanced back furtively to the real one on the crimson ottoman. There could be no mistaking, even in the convulsions of her laughter, the prototype of the figure.

Soon Princess Sophia observed this, and with a sudden accession of dignity hurried Leonard off.

‘Let me show you the way to the Chamber of Horrors,’ he said, in a voice vibrating with suppressed laughter, ‘so that you will know where to look for yourself next year.’

They could give but a superficial attention to that temple of classical criminals. Sophia longed to go back to her own figure, which exercised a strange fascination over her. She wanted to see the manager, to have him to dinner, to hail him as the first humorist in Europe. Then she protested that it was monstrous that she should have to pay to see an exhibition in which she herself was so leading an attraction. She was half inclined to demand her money back at the door, had it not been for the treat she had enjoyed in seeing herself as others, or, at any rate, that strict moralist who wrote the account of the figure, saw her. The Monument, the Zoological Gardens, the Underground Railway, even a most remarkable play at one of the West End theatres, where two ignoble gentlemen cut through a pack to see who should marry an heiress, both turning up sevens and then kings, had a touch of bathos after Madame Tussaud’s; and Leonard and Sophia went back there more than once and found the joke remained of that superlative order which is only enhanced by repetition. The Princess, even in her middle life, retained a youthful passion for being amused, but never, so she thought, had she made a better investment in joy than with those shillings she paid to the doorkeeper at the waxwork show.

She remained in England all August and September, and in the third week of that month Leonard went back to Eton. Sophia, who wished to see the place, paid him a visit there, and made herself remarkably popular by securing for the school the promise of an extra week in the next summer holidays, in honour of her visit. In eight weeks Leonard would be easily repaid for his four days’ journey to Rhodopé, and she intended him to come home, for the first time since he went to Eton. Femme propose.

She was to leave England about the middle of October, and a week before she should have started she was back in London again from a round of visits. One morning she found on her breakfast-table a letter with the Eton postmark on it, but not addressed in Leonard’s hand. She opened it without apprehension, and read the following statement in the headmaster’s neat and scholarly handwriting: