“All marriages are risks,” returned the Princess; “but I hope there will be less danger than usual about this one. In the first place, they cannot be married for six months at least, for it is not a year until August since your father’s death, and they will learn to know each other very thoroughly during this tour of ours.” “There’s a good deal in that,” assented Cyril. “If people can keep the peace on board ship, they are pretty safe anywhere.” “Then,” went on the Princess, “your brother is singularly calm and reasonable----” “And therefore well fitted to cope with an unreasonable woman, you would say?” suggested Cyril. “No,” said the Princess, taking up the cudgels on behalf of her god-daughter, “Nadia is not unreasonable. She is very downright, and she sees only one thing at a time. I think you have a word for this characteristic of hers, but I forget it.” “One-idea’d?” said Cyril. “Yes; that is it. And she will never do what she thinks is wrong.” “And she is always ready to be a martyr, and to make martyrs of other people. Would it be rude to ask you, Princess, to suggest to her that she has cultivated heroism long enough, and that the softer virtues of daily life might have a turn with advantage?” “Our life in Scythia may not have been the best school for her,” said the Princess, thoughtfully. “We Evangelicals have always been set apart--laughed at even when we were not persecuted, and such an experience fortifies one strongly against thinking too much of the opinion of others. It also develops, as you imply, one set of qualities rather at the expense of another set. And then she has that Irish faculty of concentration--blind devotion to an idea I have heard it called; but it need not necessarily be blind.” “Irish?” Cyril raised his eyebrows. “I should have said that I never met any one more unlike the typical Irish girl than Miss O’Malachy. Her brother, too, was extremely un-Hibernian.” “Ah, that is because you are thinking of the ordinary Irish type--Colonel O’Malachy’s, for instance. Gay, what you call a ‘good fellow,’ always ready for a frolic, possessing a keen sense of the ridiculous. But there is also another kind of Irishmen altogether. They have no sense of humour, or they would not preach under the protection of the police to howling mobs, or sacrifice their lives and their honour to some wrong-headed or hopeless cause. Nadia and her brother belong to this type, so do many conspirators, and not a few martyrs.” “This is rather a poor look-out for Caerleon,” said Cyril.