The King thought for a while before answering. "Is there any reason that I should?" But though he thus spoke to temporize over the position in which he now found himself, he knew that his opportunity was gone never to recur. "Merely for our own guidance," explained the Prime Minister. "There is to be a special Cabinet meeting to-night." "What are you going to discuss?" "Should your Majesty remain, it will be our duty to present an address of loyal congratulation immediately on the reassembling of Parliament; and that, under the new circumstances, must take place almost at once. In any event some address will, of course, have to be moved; but if what has happened to-day is followed by an abdication, then regrets and deep gratitude for all the gracious benefits of the past would have to be added, and the whole form of it most carefully weighed and considered. I may say, therefore, that we are even now awaiting your Majesty's instructions." "And you can do nothing till I decide?" "Nothing practical, sir." Their eyes met with a lurking watchfulness; and it was not difficult for each to read something of the other's thought. The King knew that behind all that aspect of deference and humility lay a sense of triumph, almost malignant in its intensity. He knew that circumstances had beaten him; and that the bomb of some wretched assassin had made his abdication impossible. The Prime Minister had said that he had no wish to press him; but what a pretense and hypocrisy that was, when that very night the Cabinet would have to meet and register its decision in one of two alternative forms totally distinct. Yes; the Ministry had him now in a cleft stick; and no pressure was to be put upon him only because there was no possibility for his decision to be delayed. Defeat, following upon the terrific events of the day, filled his brain with weariness. At the moment when he had hoped to be free of his persecutors he had come once again to a blank wall. Further progress was barred, further thinking had become useless, events must take their course; once more he felt himself the sport of fate--a mere chip floating with the stream. "Very well, Mr. Prime Minister," he said with resignation, "the Abdication is withdrawn." He sighed deeply; and then (when left alone to his cogitations), for such weak comfort as the mere saving of his face could lend, this thought occurred to him,--"What a good thing that I told nobody about it." Even Max did not know. And so in the year of his Jubilee, and the plenitude of his popularity, John of Jingalo continued to reign; and was, in consequence, the most saddened and humiliated monarch who ever bowed his head under a crown and resigned his freedom to a mixed sense of duty and a fear of what people might say. CHAPTER XVI CONCEALMENT AND DISCOVERY I