“I don’t think so. Nadia has learnt a lesson from the past month; she is humbled, and she will have less confidence in her own judgment from henceforth. She has seen to-day something of your brother’s true character, and the better she knows him, the more she will trust him. Then, they will not have the trial and temptation of idleness, for both of them are born workers. I look to see them do great things for God and His poor on your brother’s estates in the provinces. They will strengthen each other’s hands in the good work, and the opposition which they will encounter from the world will bind them more closely together at home.” “I suppose they will go in for closing all the public-houses on the estate, and that sort of thing,” groaned Cyril. “By the bye, there was part of Stefanovics’s letter that I didn’t read. I didn’t want to cast a damp over their first evening. King Otto Georg has repealed Caerleon’s liquor law.” “Oh, no!” cried the Princess. “He has, indeed. It seems that when the people found out that Caerleon wasn’t killed, they wanted to have him back again, and there were riots in several places. The King and Drakovics were concerting measures for the maintenance of peace, when Drakovics was seized with a bright idea. ‘Repeal the liquor law,’ he said. ‘That will please the people, and release a sum of money, which you can apply to the relief of taxation.’ They were in a pretty tight place, so the King jumped at the idea, and the law was repealed just a week ago. Stefanovics says that the Carlinists were all going about in austere dignity, like so many Girondins, each man wearing his temperance medal with Caerleon’s head on it at his button-hole, and lamenting the virtues of the late reign, but the mass of the people accepted the bribe like a shot. There were no more Carlinist riots, and now any one can get drunk that likes.” “It is a sad step backwards,” murmured the Princess. “It is strange, isn’t it,” said Cyril, “that Miss O’Malachy should have failed to keep Caerleon on the throne, after all her trying, and that the one piece of his work which he hoped would last should be undone six weeks after he leaves Thracia? They have both failed utterly.” “Some people’s failures are better than other people’s successes,” said the Princess, with unwonted sharpness. “I must say that I prefer your brother’s failure to the success which would have been yours had you been able to secure his remaining on the throne.” “Well, I can congratulate myself that I did what I could to keep him there,” said Cyril, a little uncomfortably. “Can you indeed congratulate yourself?” asked the Princess. “I do not know what your methods were, but I remember that you did not appear to look back upon them with complacency when you thought yourself dying.” “Well, you know, I felt that I had played it rather low down on Caerleon, and that isn’t a thing one cares to think of.”