“Why!” cried her mother. “Because he has insulted us, played with us, made us the laughing-stock of Europe. Although you may be a fool, your father knows how to avenge the honour of his house, and he will not fail to do it. You refused to share the Thracian throne; but it is Carlino who has put it out of his own power to offer you the crown a second time, and for this he must be rewarded as he deserves. In every way we are undone. Not only have we lost the position we might have held in Thracia, but this marriage will endanger the result of all our labours in Europe.” “Ah!” cried Nadia, assuming a sudden interest in politics in the vain hope of diverting from herself the gaze of her mother’s glittering eyes, “it was this marriage that Vladimir Alexandrovitch was anxious to prevent. He foresaw the possibility of its taking place, and he knew that it would bring Pannonia to the help of King Carlino. Thracia is saved, then!” “Yes; and you----?” asked Madame O’Malachy, with her most merciless smile, as she retired from the room, half baffled by her daughter’s resolution, but certain that she left a sting behind her. And this was indeed the case. Although Nadia had succeeded in making herself believe that she wished Caerleon to follow the advice she had given him, she discovered now that she had never expected him to do so. She had found an unspeakable comfort in remembering the indignant rebuke with which he had answered her when she told him that although he loved her, it was his duty to marry some other woman; and even now she sorrowed less for the fact that she was herself forsaken than that her lover had proved unstable. He had failed in faith; he was fearless and stainless no more. Well, no doubt it was better so. He was no longer hers, he had not been hers since they parted at Bellaviste; and if he was proved not to be the blameless knight she had imagined him, at least he was a wise king, and was preparing to take the only step by which it seemed possible to save his kingdom in the present crisis. Undoubtedly it was better so. But Nadia’s heart and soul rose up in rebellion against this view of the case, and all day, as she followed the mountain-paths, or moved about inside the hut in which lay the sick child she was visiting, she was mourning in silence a trust betrayed, a high ideal shattered. It was her own fault, she knew; she had told him to forget her, but she had illogically expected him to disobey, and required him to be stronger morally than she was.