fleet who could talk to them--and the poor little pallid wretches expected this grand sailor, whom they thought a much finer man than the Admiral, to do something. All he did was to hover back to Donna Rusidda, whenever none of the other ladies were shrieking for him, and help to hold the children from being flung about. He showed them all the respectful kindness that was in his nature. For the Queen (except her courage) and the Court (except Donna Rusidda) he had, as has been shown, a feeling something like loathing and contempt; but he had been brought up with High Tory ideas, and for Royalty in the abstract he had a courtly respect, and to these poor bits of Royalty, half dead with sea-sickness and fear, his heart opened beyond its wont. There was another difference between the Sicilian Princess and My Lady. My Lady let all the children cling to her together, even when they were sick, thinking it cruel to them to flinch and that she could change her dress if need were. The Sicilian Princess, on the other hand, would have no more than two of them at once; and holding them tenderly, but adroitly, helped them through their troubles, always contriving to shrink her pretty person out of the danger. Even Will performed the office quite creditably; and, being in his oilskins, had no fear. Two minutes on deck in such a sea would put that right. His eyes were much on Donna Rusidda. It gratified his fastidious soul to see a woman keep her daintiness in such a stye, and her courage, and her laughter, when the high-sounding officers of the Sicilian army and navy were a wallowing mass of Saints and sickness. But I, looking in to see where I could be of any use, was not blinded by my love for Will from seeing that neither he standing so godlike, nor the Princess playfully caring for the children, and thereby showing her stout heart, were comparable to My Lady, whose loveliness must have been dimmed, if such loveliness could have been dimmed, while she wandered with her hair and her clothing pulled awry by the children--aye, and by the grown-up men and women of the Court too--performing the offices of an angel and many servants. I do not know if at the moment she was enhancing her beauty in the manner I have described,--she had the gift at will of intensifying it,--but certainly it seemed as if no human countenance could have before held so much serene loveliness, yearning sympathy, tender pity, and blithe courage. She was the angel of all and the servant of all. She was never in her bed through all the three days of the storm. The moment at which she was lovelier than ever I saw her in her life, was when poor little Prince Albert, who had eaten the good breakfast that she bade him and been in violent pain and sickness ever since, at seven o'clock of the evening threw his little arms convulsively round her neck and vomited out his life, his mother the while being prostrated with the sea-sickness, as she was after to be with his death.