"Shall I interpret for your Majesty and his Excellency?" she inquired in the most ordinary way; and when the Queen replied in the affirmative, informed the Admiral that this was Her Majesty's wish, and added that she had prompted Her Majesty to send for him, and that it would not be usual for him to take his leave until Her Majesty gave the signal, thus securing him from doing anything hastily in connection with the incident. At the door the Admiral found Will waiting for orders, and, with characteristic command, showing a face devoid of any expression but the smiling respect with which he invariably greeted his chief when he met him or was sent for. Telling him to attend, the Admiral waited on Her Majesty, when, finding that they were to converse privately, My Lady interpreting, Will fell back among the less important members of the royal party, and seeing at a glance that there were no English among them to whom courtesy demanded that he should pass a few remarks, he retired within his shell, as it were, and stood with unseeing eyes. He was glad to keep silence, for the events which had just happened had shocked him even more than the Admiral himself. Impressionable and emotional as the Admiral was, an attack was in itself calculated to make his spirits rise, though the nature of this attack, from the fact that it was levelled chiefly against a lady for whom he felt such an attachment and respect, stood in the way of his natural tendency on this occasion. Neither had Will the Admiral's philosophy, deeply tinged with a religiousness on the one hand and lightened with an intermittent gaiety on the other. Will, except in action, had a slow-moving mind, which many things failed to reach, but when they did reach it, or were of a serious nature, he could not easily shake them off. As he stood giving the rein to his thoughts, he took little note of those among whom he was standing until he heard himself addressed, and found that he was next the Prince of Favara and his sister. There was a genuine ring in the Prince's voice, as if bygones were really bygones, and the salutations were not merely a piece of duellists' etiquette when the combatants happened to meet again. Donna Rusidda, too, greeted him as if she were glad to see him. Under ordinary circumstances Will would, as likely as not, have found some well-bred way of escaping from a position which threatened to be awkward for both of them; but he was so agitated about the affair with Lieutenant Nisbet that he had not his usual collectedness, nor was it easy for him, being in attendance upon the Admiral, to place a distance between himself and the Favaras who were in attendance upon the Queen.