“I have just been telegraphing my congratulations to the new King,” he said, “and assuring him that I had far rather he was on the throne than I. I feel like a schoolboy out for a holiday.” “Oh, hush!” said Nadia, gravely. “I have bad news for you. The doctor is here, and he says that your brother is decidedly worse.” Caerleon gazed at her in astonishment. “But I thought he was so much better!” he cried. “That was only a temporary improvement, attributable to the greater comfort of his surroundings,” she answered, quoting the medical pronouncement word for word. “The doctor hoped that the pain would decrease a good deal in the night; but it is worse, and he is afraid he will be obliged to perform an operation.” With a muttered apology, Caerleon hurried past her, and hastened up-stairs to Cyril’s room, meeting the doctor on the way, and hearing the unfavourable verdict confirmed. The patient’s state was critical, and the remedies which had been applied seemed to have failed of their effect. Everything depended now on constant care and attention, and this the Princess and her household might be relied upon to furnish. But such a transference of responsibility could not satisfy Caerleon. He insisted on taking his share, and much more than his share, of the nursing, and would never have quitted his brother’s room if he had not been compelled to do so. The Princess and the doctor between them hunted him out for a walk twice a-day, and obliged him to take his meals in an adjoining room, but except during these short intervals he insisted on remaining with Cyril. The telegram which reached him from M. Drakovics, inquiring anxiously what course he intended to pursue with regard to Thracia, and that from King Otto Georg, offering to resign the kingdom to him at once, were read and answered by the patient’s bedside, and forgotten as soon as they had been disposed of, in the all-absorbing interest of the struggle between life and death. The Princess was surprised and touched by the devotion of the elder brother to the younger, but Nadia read Caerleon’s feelings more clearly. He was indignant with himself for acquiescing so easily in the cheerful view at first taken of Cyril’s state, and for allowing his mind to turn to considerations respecting his own love and happiness when the brother who had come to Thracia for his sake, who had done his best to keep him on his unstable throne, and who was suffering even now through his misfortune, was too much prostrated by pain and weakness even to realise the gravity of his own condition. To devote himself now altogether to Cyril, and to atone for his past neglect by cutting himself off almost entirely from Nadia’s society, was his first impulse, but Nadia only admired him the more on this very account, for in a similar case her own instinct would have been to do exactly the same. As it was, she stifled a sigh over the memories of that first evening and morning, when Caerleon had seemed