“It is rather a new experience for me,” continued the Prince, “to be treated as a kind of petitioner on the King’s favour, and kept in attendance,--but no matter!--novelty is always pleasing! I have been cooling my heels here for more than an hour. Von Glauben, too, has been waiting;--contrary to custom, he has not even been permitted to enquire after his Majesty’s health this morning!” Lutera maintained his former expression of polite surprise, but said nothing. Instinct warned him to be sparing of words lest he should betray his own private anxiety. The Prince went on carelessly. “Majesty takes humours like other men, and must, more than other men, I suppose, be humoured! Yet there is to my mind something unnatural in a system which causes several human beings to be dependent on another’s caprice!” “You will not say so, Sir, when you yourself are King,” observed the Marquis. “Long distant be the day!” returned the Prince. “Indeed, I hope it may never be! I would rather be the simplest peasant ploughing the fields, and happy in my own way, than suffer the penalties and pains surrounding the possession of a Throne!” “Only,” put in Von Glauben sententiously, “you would have to take into consideration, Sir, whether the peasant ploughing the fields is happy in his own way. I have made ‘the peasant ploughing the fields’ a special form of study,--and I have always found him a remarkably discontented, often ill-fed--and therefore unhealthy individual.” “We are all discontented, if it comes to that!” said Prince Humphry with a light laugh,--“Except myself! I am perfectly contented!” “You have reason to be, Sir,” said Lutera, bowing low. “You are quite right, Marquis!--I have! More reason than perhaps you are aware of!” His eyes lightened and flashed; he looked unusually handsome, and the Premier’s shifty glance rested on him for a moment with a certain curiosity. But he had not been accustomed to pay very much attention to the words or actions of the Heir-Apparent, considering him to be a very ‘ordinary’ young man, without either the brilliancy or the ambition which should mark him out as worthy of his exalted station. And before any further conversation could take place, Sir Roger de Launay entered the room and announced to the Marquis that the King was ready to receive him. Prince Humphry turning sharply round, faced the equerry. “I am still to wait?” he enquired, with a slight touch of hauteur. Sir Roger bowed respectfully. “Your instant desire to see the King, your father, Sir, was communicated to his Majesty at once,” he replied. “The present delay is by his Majesty’s own orders. I much regret----” “Regret nothing, my dear Sir Roger,” he said. “My patience does not easily tire! Marquis, I trust your business will not take long?” “I shall endeavour to make it as brief as possible, Sir,” replied the Premier deferentially as he withdrew.