sometimes, not even every year, a fortnight either in Gothland or here. You sometimes reproach me that I, who am so fond of Gothland, come to you so seldom, but it is always for the same reason: Othomar does not care to leave Liparia and I can't leave my husband. I can be strong when I am at his side, but alone I am so weak, Olga. That anything might happen to _him_ which I should not share increases my dread unbearably. I felt that again quite lately, when I was with Thera at Altara: our visit was announced and binding; and, however unwilling I was to leave Oscar, I was obliged to go, was I not? It was just at that trying period; Lipara was under martial law. But Oscar wished me to go and I went. Oh, how I suffered at that time! "But I am becoming used to my fears, I do not complain and I accept life as it comes; I only hope that my boy will also learn to accept it thus. Perhaps he will learn. Indeed it is not so easy for him, for he will have to do more than his mother, who, as a woman, can be much more passive; and it is easier to learn to acquiesce passively than actively. But the Saints will surely give him strength later to bear his lot and his crown; this I rely upon. And yet, O Olga, it makes me so immensely sad that we are sovereigns! But let me not continue in this strain: it weakens one, it is not right, it is not right.... "There is also a secret reason why I should like to get Othomar away from Lipara, though it always grieves me so much to part from my darling. There seems after all to be some truth in those rumours about the Duchess of Yemena: Oscar asked Myxila about it and he could not deny it and even said that it was generally known. I do my best not to take it too much to heart, Olga, but I think it a terrible thing. O God, let me not think or write about it any more; otherwise it will go whirling so in my poor head! What can my son see in a woman who is older than his own mother! What a terrible world, this is, Olga, in which these things take place; and how can there be such women, whom you and I will never understand! For, after all, temperament is not everything: every woman has her own heart; and in that we ought all to see one another; but it would seem that we can't. In my sadness about this, I prefer to assume that the woman loves my boy and therefore deceives her husband. Oh, it is so wicked also of my boy: why need he be like this, he who is otherwise so good! I just assume that she loves him. Not long ago we had my last drawing-room, the function with which, as you know, our winter-season ends; and, when she came up to me and bowed before me and pressed her lips to my hand, she must have felt my disapproval and my sadness radiating from my fingers, for she rose out of her curtsey with a desperate look of anguish in her eyes and a sort of sob in her throat! I stared at her coldly, but all the same I pitied her, Olga, for, when a woman of our world is so little able to control herself at a ceremonial