Sheila, as she went out of the room, had her head cast down, and, perhaps, an extra tinge of color in her young and pretty face. But surely, Lavender thought to himself as he watched her anxiously, she did not look grieved. As for her father, what should he do now? Turn suddenly around and beg Mackenzie’s pardon, and throw himself on his generosity? When he did, with much inward trembling, venture to approach the old man, he found no such explanation possible. The King of Borva was in one of his grandest moods--dignified, courteous, cautious, and yet inclined to treat everybody and everything with a sort of lofty good humor. He spoke to Lavender in the most friendly way, but it was about the singular and startling fact that modern research had proved many of the Roman legends to be utterly untrustworthy. Mr. Mackenzie observed that the man was wanting in proper courage who feared to accept the results of such inquiries. It was better that we should know the truth, and then the kings who had really made Rome great might emerge from the fog of tradition in their proper shape. There was something quite sympathetic in the way he talked of those ill-treated sovereigns, whom the vulgar mind had clothed in mist. Lavender was sorely beset by the rival claims of Rome and Borva upon his attention. He was inwardly inclined to curse Numa Pompilius--which would have been ineffectual--when he found that personage interfering with a wild effort to discover why Mackenzie should treat him in this way. And then it occurred to him that, as he had never said a word to Mackenzie about this affair, it was too much to expect that Sheila’s father should himself open the subject. On the contrary, Mackenzie was bent on extending a grave courtesy to his guest, so that the latter should not feel ill at ease until it suited himself to make any explanations he might choose. It was not Mackenzie’s business to ask this young man if he wanted to marry Sheila. No. The king’s daughter, if she were to be won at all, was to be won by a suitor; and it was not for her father to be in a hurry about it. So Lavender got back into the region of early Roman history, and tried to recall what he had learned in Livy, and quite coincided with everything that Niebuhr had said or proved, and with everything that Mackenzie thought Niebuhr had said or proved. He was only too glad, indeed, to find himself talking to Sheila’s father in this friendly fashion.