"Most Gracious Sovereign, I kiss your hand." Featherstone it was, and he pressed his lips against the knuckles of the sometime King; but the words were spoken coldly, like words of duty. Lost in amazement at this unusual scene, Miss Windsor had failed to observe a young man follow soberly and even sadly in the footsteps of the other two and stand aloof, though expectantly. Her eyes and those of the King must have fallen upon him almost at the same moment. The heart in her bosom leapt wildly. Pale and worn as he was, she recognized Geoffrey Ripon. "Lord Brompton!" exclaimed the King, and he grew confused, for the peer did not kneel as the others had done. "Lord Brompton, I am glad to see you," and he remounted the throne. "Sire, I have come to bring you a legacy from John Dacre," said Ripon, and he drew from his breast as he spoke a smoke-stained and tattered piece of the royal banner and laid it at the foot of the throne. "This is from Aldershot, sir." A murmur spread through the room, and the color mounted to the King's face. "Sirrah, I do not understand you. I am your King." "As for myself," said Geoffrey, without regarding the monarch's frown, "I return this, which my ancestor more than a century ago first unsheathed in fealty to the House of Hanover." He took from its scabbard the sword with which Maggie had girded him that day when he courted her in the haunted chamber of Ripon House, and snapped the blade in twain. He flung the pieces on the ground and turned to leave the room. At the first step he encountered the glance of the woman he loved bent upon him with an expression in which pride and tenderness were strangely intermingled. He bowed low to her, and was gone. CHAPTER XVIII. TWO CARDS PLAYED. The morning following the scene with Ripon, his Majesty was in an ill-temper. The events of the evening were not pleasant to remember; then the King had lost largely at poker, and had passed a sleepless night. Mrs. Carey had sent word that she had not recovered from her fainting fit, and was not yet visible. Old Bugbee's promised remittance had not arrived. And the entire court joined in what seemed a deliberate effort to make things generally disagreeable. The pages who were on duty at the royal toilet came in for some bad moments; and young Lord Gladstone Churchill privately confided to Paran Paget that he had never seen the old man in such a devil of a wax.