“His Majesty’s conduct is angelic,” returned Madame O’Malachy. “But of what use are all the flowers in Thracia if the artist’s eye for their arrangement is wanting?” She had taken the vase from Nadia and removed half its contents, then, with a twirl here and a poke there, she transformed the remainder into a thing of beauty. “I regret to perceive that the artistic instinct, the soul of poetry, is wanting in my daughter. She is very thorough, extremely conscientious, but what one may call--not heavy, that would be unkind--shall we say _solid_? I am perpetually worrying myself to discover why she bears no resemblance at all to me. ‘A reversion to an earlier type,’ I suppose the scientific gentlemen would call it; _I_ say that she is one of the trials of my life. For me, I am not at all conscientious, I do nothing thoroughly; but I think I am not heavy?” She paused with her eyebrows uplifted in interrogation; and Cyril, though he had been reflecting what wretchedly bad form it was for a woman to try to make her daughter feel small in this way, had presence of mind enough to answer that such a word could never be mentioned in the same breath with the name of Madame O’Malachy. “But I must hurry away,” the lady went on, “or O’Malachy will come up to look for me. I shall hear your news when I return, Milord Cyril.” CHAPTER VIII. FOR HIS GOOD. “I think I have one piece of news that at any rate you will like to hear,” said Cyril, as Madame O’Malachy rustled out of the room and down the corridor towards the lift. Nadia’s grey eyes glanced towards him. “You did not come here to offer us hothouse flowers,” she remarked. “There is something else that you have to say.” “Won’t you believe that I came to enjoy the delightful conversation of Madame and yourself?” asked Cyril, lazily, for he was in a particularly comfortable chair, and found the spectacle of Nadia’s laborious dealing with the flowers very entertaining. “No,” she answered, bluntly, irritated by his manner. “Well, Caerleon intends to offer your brother a commission in the palace guard. Is that important enough to satisfy you?” “I daresay it is important, but it is not what you came to say.” “You are a little exacting, mademoiselle. Is this what you want? My brother asked me to tell you that he proposes to begin to-day the investigation you recommended him to set on foot.” “That is good!” she cried. “I knew I should not be disappointed in him. But you have another message still.” “Pardon me, I have no other message, although my business with you grows, if I may say so, out of that last message.” “Precisely, and I know what it is. You wish to say that his Majesty’s eager compliance with my wishes betokens a state of affairs which you, as a man of the world, consider highly inexpedient when it exists in connection with the King of Thracia and a penniless foreigner.”