The news reached Malta in time for publication in the morning papers. Ever since the first tidings of the outbreak had arrived, the Princess and Nadia had heard nothing discussed, whether in public or in private, but the “Thracian business,” with all the gruesome details which the hopes or fears or imaginations of different people had grafted on to the truth. The long uncertainty had made the girl sick with fear. She was almost driven to feel that it would have been less painful to hear once for all that Caerleon was dead than to have absolutely no idea as to what had become of him. On this particular morning she was crouching in one of the windows of the great bare drawing-room, afraid to go out lest she should hear the question of Caerleon’s fate discussed once again, but knowing that she could not refrain from listening to the conjectures which tormented her, when the Princess was summoned to an interview with Captain Binks. Breakfast was only just over; but the autocrat of the Anna Karénina resembled time and tide in that he waited for no man, and he wanted the Princess’s authority for some item of the repairs to the yacht. The formality, which was naturally of a purely ceremonial character, having been gone through, Captain Binks was about to depart, when the Princess caught sight of a newspaper sticking out of his pocket. “Is that to-day’s paper?” she asked, moved by a sudden impulse of alarm for which there appeared no special reason. “Yes, your Highness. Sad business this about Thracia. I wish I had the men that murdered that poor fellow aboard of my ship. There would be no yard-arms to let when I’d done with ’em.” “Murdered?” said the Princess, with sinking heart. “Please let me see.” Captain Binks smoothed out the crumpled sheet and handed it to her, and she read the account, telegraphed in the first instance from Bellaviste to London, over a hastily repaired wire, by the correspondent of the ‘Fleet Street,’ of the recapture of the city, of Louis O’Malachy’s confession, and of Prince Otto Georg’s election to the vacant throne. As she read it she resolved instantly that Nadia should hear nothing of the news until the report was confirmed. “Thank you, my good captain,” she said, handing the paper back to its owner. “It is indeed terrible! Will you have the goodness to send Alessandro to me as you go out?”