ANNO DOMINI 2000; OR, _WOMAN'S DESTINY_. BY SIR JULIUS VOGEL, K.C.M.G. LONDON: HUTCHINSON AND CO., 25, PATERNOSTER SQUARE. 1889. Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury. Dedicated TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE EARL OF CARNARVON, WHO, BY HIS SUCCESSFUL EFFORTS TO CONSOLIDATE THE CANADIAN DOMINIONS, HAS GREATLY AIDED THE CAUSE OF FEDERATION. CONTENTS. PAGE PROLOGUE 3 CHAPTER I. THE YEAR 2000--UNITED BRITAIN 27 CHAPTER II. THE EMPEROR AND HILDA FITZHERBERT 59 CHAPTER III. LORD REGINALD PARAMATTA 67 CHAPTER IV. A PARTIAL VICTORY 83 CHAPTER V. CABINET NEGOTIATIONS 99 CHAPTER VI. BAFFLED REVENGE 119 CHAPTER VII. HEROINE WORSHIP 165 CHAPTER VIII. AIR-CRUISERS 177 CHAPTER IX. TOO STRANGE NOT TO BE TRUE 193 CHAPTER X. LORD REGINALD AGAIN 215 CHAPTER XI. GRATEFUL IRELAND 233 CHAPTER XII. THE EMPEROR PLANS A CAMPAIGN 251 CHAPTER XIII. LOVE AND WAR 261 CHAPTER XIV. THE FOURTH OF JULY RETRIEVED 287 CHAPTER XV. CONCLUSION 295 EPILOGUE 309 PROLOGUE. A.D. 1920. George Claude Sonsius in his early youth appeared to have before him a fair, prosperous future. His father and mother were of good family, but neither of them inherited wealth. When young Sonsius finished his university career, the small fortune which his father possessed was swept away by the failure of a large banking company. All that remained from the wreck was a trifling annuity payable during the lives of his father and mother, and this they did not live long to enjoy. They died within a year of each other, but they had been able to obtain for their son a fairly good position in a large mercantile house as foreign correspondent. At twenty-five the young man married; and three years afterwards he unfortunately met with a serious accident, that made him for two years a helpless invalid and at the end of the time left him with his right hand incapable of use. Meanwhile his appointment had lapsed, his wife's small fortune had disappeared, and during several years his existence had been one continual struggle with ever-increasing want and penury. The end was approaching. The father and mother and their one crippled son, twelve years old, dwelt in the miserable attic of a most dilapidated house in one of the poorest neighbourhoods of London. The roof over their heads did not even protect them from the weather. The room was denuded of every article of furniture with the exception of two worthless wooden cases and a horsehair mattress on which the unhappy boy stretched his pain-wrung limbs.