The simple family-life at Altseeborgen worked on Othomar like a cure. He felt himself reviving amid natural surroundings, his humanity developing wide and untrammelled. Accustomed as he was to the ceremonial life of the Imperial, with its court-etiquette strictly maintained by the Emperor Oscar, he was at first surprised, but soon delighted by the almost homely simplicity of his Gothlandic relations. In former years, it is true, he had paid an occasional brief visit to Altseeborgen, but had never stayed long enough to be able to count himself, as now, quite one of themselves. Othomar was at this moment the only visitor from abroad, except the Archduchess Valérie, a niece of the Emperor of Austria. Did the young people suspect anything, or not? Were their names coupled together by the younger princes and princesses? Not so, to all outward seeming: only once or twice had Princess Sofie or Princess Wanda found it necessary to hush her young brothers with a glance. And yet it was with a serious intention that the Queen of Gothland, in concert with the Emperor of Liparia and Valérie's parents--the Archduke Albrecht and the Archduchess of Eudoxie, who lived at Sigismundingen Castle--had brought the young people together. The Emperor Oscar would certainly have preferred one of the young Russian grand-duchesses, a niece of the Czar, for his daughter-in-law; but the difference in religion remained an insurmountable obstacle; and the emperor, despite his preference, had no objection to the Austrian alliance.