Charles, as he spoke, seemed to warm slowly into a rhapsody of sentiment. Tears even sprang out of his eyes, his lips quivered, and for the moment he appeared wholly overcome by an emotion of inexpressible regret and tenderness. In the bearer of that name it seemed an exquisitely natural manifestation. The woman, whose life had been passed in the shadow of his ineffably lamentable history, felt herself to be succumbing to this outburst from the lips of the most unfortunate Prince since the world began. The dire circumstances in which this unhappy young King was lying; his voice; his bearing; the mean disguise to which he must have recourse because the hand of every man was against him--all this, in conjunction with the outburst of feeling he now displayed, was too much for the feminine witness of it. Every night she prayed for his safety; in her dreams she saw his face; to her he was the one hero of romance, the most exquisitely noble and tender figure in the whole woman’s world of the ideal. He was the prince out of the fairybook; and when she saw him thus with the tears in his eyes, and a divine tremor in his tones, her heart overflowed. She looked at the King; she looked at him to bestow upon him the mute consolation of her tender heart. The tears were in her own eyes too; her own lips quivered. The King, half-smiling through the tears that were still coursing down his cheeks, bent towards her as if overcome by such an infinite compassion. The look of sad thanks he gave her seemed to send all the blood wild in her brain; the King’s eyes seemed to set her soul on fire. She was not conscious that he had gathered her in his arms, and that her breast was drawn against his own; indeed, of only one thing had she consciousness, and that with the vague excitement of the senses a dream or a delirium induces. It was, that the King’s lips were pressed in a fierce madness against her own. With a little cry, she thrust him from her and burst out of his arms. Involuntarily her frightened eyes fell on the sleeper in the bed. He slept no more. He lay with his eyes riveted on the King, who had his back towards him. He lay as weak and helpless as a child from the effects of his malady; but his hands were clenched on the coverlet, his white cheeks gleamed, his eyes blazed. He strove impotently to rise from his pillows, but fell back upon them gasping for breath. The distinct sounds of his struggle were heard by the King. He desisted from his absorbing occupation, and turned round to discover their cause. “Ha! Farnham,” he said, coolly, “so you are awake at last. I have heard of that little affair of the bullet. I must, indeed, rejoice with you that you have struggled so valiantly against its effects; I am overjoyed, my dear Farnham, to find you so far recovered.”