She left the room. The two men looked at each other in silence. At last Von Glauben said:-- “Ronsard, I think you will soon reap the reward of your ‘life-philosophy’ system! You have fed that girl from her childhood on strong intellectual food, and trained the mental muscles rather than the physical ones. Upon my word, I believe you will see a good result!” Ronsard, who had grown much calmer and quieter during the last few minutes, raised himself a little from the chair into which he had sunk with an air of fatigue, and looked dreamily towards the open lattice window, where the roses hung in a curtain of crimson blossom. “If it be so, I shall praise God!” he said; “But the years have come and gone with me so peacefully since I made my home on these quiet shores, that the exercise of what I have presumed to call ‘philosophy’ has had no chance. Philosophy! It is well to preach it,--but when the blow of misfortune falls, who can practise it?” “You can,” replied the Professor;--“I can! Gloria can! I think we all three have clear brains. There is a tendency in the present age to overlook and neglect the greatest power in the whole human composition,--the mental and psychical part of it. Now, in the present curious drama of events, we have a chance given to exercise it; and it will be our own faults if we do not make our wills rule our destinies!” “But the position is intolerable--impossible!” said Ronsard, rising and pacing the room with a fresh touch of agitation. “Nothing can do away with the fact that we--my child and I--have been cruelly deceived! And now there can be only one of two contingencies; Gloria must be acknowledged as the Prince’s wife,--in which case he will be forced to resign all claim to the Throne;--or he must marry again, which makes her no wife at all. That is a disgrace which her pride would never submit to, nor mine;--for did I not kill a king?” “Let me advise you for the future not to allude to that disagreeable incident!” said Von Glauben persuasively: “Exercise discretion,--as I do! Observe that I do not ask you what king you killed;--I am as careful on that matter as I am concerning the reasons for which I myself left my native Fatherland! I make it a rule never to converse on painful subjects. You tell me you have tried to atone; then believe that the atonement is made, and that Gloria is the sign of its acceptance, and--happy augury!--here she comes.”