Mr Hicks, when in after days he related his impressions of the incidents of that evening, whether in conversation or in the columns of the ‘Empire City Crier,’ was wont to remark, with much originality and force, that coming events cast their shadows before them, and that there is no accounting for the sympathetic movements of certain finely constituted minds. This was his way of leading up to the striking fact that while he and Madame O’Malachy were in the midst of a pleasant chat, in which the reputations of various Thracian notabilities suffered rather severely, the lady broke off suddenly in the course of a sentence and sighed deeply. In response to his anxious inquiries, she assured him that she was not ill, but that she felt a presentiment of coming misfortune,--“and at such a time as this,” she added, “you, monsieur, as a friend of the family, will be at no loss to understand the subject of my anxiety. You will pardon a mother’s weakness, but it is hard to see two young lives wrecked by an obstinate pride. You have watched with interest the course of the attachment--the royal idyl, as I might call it--between the King and my daughter, and I know you will sympathise with me in my fear lest Nadia, in her sensitive delicacy, should have refused her lover through fear of being supposed to covet his throne.” “And you’ll scarcely believe me,” Mr Hicks was accustomed to continue, ignorant that by means of a mirror behind him Madame O’Malachy had noticed Nadia approaching her from the other end of the room, and discerned in an instant that her companion was not Caerleon, “but the words were not out of her mouth when I saw Lord Cyril in the distance, with Miss O’Malachy on his arm as white as a sheet, and I knew her mother was right at once. No girl that had just accepted a king ever went about with a face like that.” “Oh, Mr Hicks, do tell!” his enraptured audience would exclaim; and Mr Hicks would go on to detail how Madame O’Malachy had turned as white as her daughter on seeing her face, but had said calmly that the heat of the room was too much for Miss Nadia, and they must go home; and how she had turned to him with a sorrowful look that went to his heart, and whispered, “My kind friend, do this for us. If any one speaks to you of the matter we were discussing, let it be known that my daughter has refused his Majesty for the reason I feared.”