said Belvane. "Your Royal Highness has only to sign. It saves so much trouble," she added with a disarming smile. . . . She held the document out--all in the most beautiful colours.

Mechanically the Princess signed.

"Thank you, your Royal Highness." She smiled again, and added, "And now perhaps I had better see about it at once." The Guardian of Literature took a dignified farewell of her Sovereign and withdrew.

Hyacinth looked at Wiggs in despair.

"There!" she said. "That's me. I don't know what it is about that woman, but I feel just a child in front of her. Oh, Wiggs, Wiggs, I feel so lonely sometimes with nothing but women all around me. I wish I had a man here to help me."

"Are all the men fighting in all the countries?"

"Not all the countries. There's--Araby. Don't you remember--oh, but of course you wouldn't know anything about it. But Father was just going to ask Prince Udo of Araby to come here on a visit, when the war broke out. Oh, I wish, I wish Father were back again." She laid her head on her arms; and whether she would have shed a few royal tears or had a good homely cry, I cannot tell you. For at that moment an attendant came in. Hyacinth was herself again at once.

"There is a messenger approaching on a horse, your Royal Highness," she announced. "Doubtless from His Majesty's camp."

With a shriek of delight, and an entire lack of royal dignity, the Princess, followed by the faithful Wiggs, rushed down to receive him.

Meanwhile, what of the Countess? She was still in the Palace, and, more than that, she was in the Throne Room of the Palace, and, more even than that, she was on the Throne, of the Throne Room of the Palace.

She couldn't resist it. The door was open as she came down from her interview with the Princess, and she had to go in. There was a woman in there, tidying up, who looked questioningly at Belvane as she entered.

"You may leave," said the Countess with dignity. "Her Royal Highness sent me in here to wait for her."

The woman curtsied and withdrew.

The Countess then uttered these extraordinary words: "When I am Queen in Euralia they shall leave me backwards!"

Her subsequent behaviour was even more amazing.

 Prev. P 38/145 next