In fulfilling this parting request Mr Hicks, as a gallant American, and therefore a sworn servant of the fair sex, had spent the remainder of the evening, only pausing to glance at the King as he passed through the hall about half an hour later with set face and firmly closed lips on his way back to the palace, on the plea of illness. To the observer who had noted duly at the beginning of the entertainment that “his Majesty looked extremely well, and conversed affably with the different persons presented to him,” the change spoke volumes; but other people were not quite so ready to accept Madame O’Malachy’s explanation as he was. More than one of the chaperons with whom he touched on the subject gave it as her opinion that the King had informed Miss O’Malachy that he could not, consistently with his duty to the nation, marry her; and that a harrowing scene had ensued. It was extraordinary how widely it was known in the ballroom that something of the kind had occurred, and Mr Hicks found his duty of impressing Madame O’Malachy’s view of the case on his friends to be no sinecure. But he persevered, for he sympathised deeply with her in her disappointment, and he was also sorry for Nadia, who, as he rightly supposed, would have a good deal to endure from her mother on the way home. “Those outspoken, affectionate women can do an astonishing amount of reproaching when they are once worked up,” he said to himself; but he never dreamed of the storm of sarcasm and cruel invective under which Nadia was writhing at the moment.