“You are very kind,” said Cyril, speaking with an evident excitement unusual with him, “and I should be most delighted to accept your invitation; but as soon as I am strong again I must set to work. You won’t be surprised to hear that this Thracian business has about done for me in the diplomatic service. Of course, if we arranged things nowadays in a common-sense, Elizabethan kind of way, I should be made British agent at Bellaviste immediately, on the score of my intimate acquaintance with the country and the people; but we don’t, and I’m afraid there are not many chiefs that would care to have me under them now. I never have felt exactly drawn towards settling down and cultivating mangel-wurzels, and after the experiences of the last three months such a prospect looks less enticing than ever. This letter here is from King Otto Georg. He wants me to go back to Thracia as his private secretary--the post I held under you, Caerleon. He finds himself horribly lonely, he says--by the bye, Drakovics is said to be looking out for a wife for him, so that oughtn’t to last long--and I can see that he wants me to act as a sort of under-study for him as well. Drakovics is too important, both in view of the possibility of his being assassinated, and of his influence in the country. The King thinks that I might be useful in two ways, first, in getting some idea of the manner in which things are done, so that Drakovics’s removal might not necessarily mean the collapse of the whole system of government; and secondly, in keeping Drakovics himself from going too far. Of course Otto Georg, poor old fellow! can’t very well do that sort of thing for himself, but I think that I, as a friend of both parties, might be able to manage it.” “I don’t envy you,” said Caerleon, drily. “The position is delicate, but all the more interesting on that account,” said Cyril. “Drakovics has rather a liking for me, somehow or other, and if I can keep in with him, I might put the drag on when he is inclined to act in a regal way that few kings would stand. Otto Georg is a good fellow, and will see that I don’t have too much to do in the way of routine work. In fact, I can see that he wants me as a companion even more than as a secretary.” “You are very young,” said the Princess, and Caerleon laughed unfeelingly, for only that evening he had told Cyril that he looked so young and so innocent, with his pale face and thin hands, that all the ladies at the different ports would take him for a schoolboy. “You ought to have some one to take care of you.”