“Come,” said Cyril, “this is a ray of hope. Now you realise that she needs comforting and dressing, Nadia, you won’t steel your heart against her for long.” “I don’t want to steel my heart against her, poor little thing! but you don’t seem to see--I daresay it sounds very selfish, but you feel it too, don’t you, Carlino?--when Phil is so far away, to have to give up Usk too! I know I ought to be willing to do it, if it’s to help some one, but for him to have to go and live in Germany--it would be like losing him altogether.” “No, no, Nadia,” said her husband quickly, as she turned to him with streaming eyes, “that’s out of the question. Usk has his duties here, and he won’t give them up with my consent.” “You both seem to have the worst possible opinion of me,” lamented Cyril. “Is it likely that I should deliberately arrange for Usk to become a hanger-on at a petty German Court, where he wouldn’t even be welcomed? No; the Grand-Duchess quite sees that her husband and her daughter agree best at a distance. ‘The young people will live in England, of course,’ she said to me, ‘but they must come and see me in the mountains every year, and sometimes I will come and see them.’” “Is that Usk coming in?” cried Lady Caerleon, starting up. “Suppose you break the idea to him, Nadia, and see how he takes it,” suggested Cyril. “No one wants to force him into anything, of course, but I hardly see how he can do better. And you will manage it much more artistically than I should, for with you I began by giving the poor little girl away, which was the last thing I meant to do.” Lady Caerleon hurried into the house, and the brothers were left together. “I hope Usk will be able to see his way to it,” said Cyril. “Ernestine and I are quite foolish over this child Helene. Imagine my tearing across Europe just to get her what she wants!” “I can’t understand even now how the Grand-Duke came to give in. One has always heard that his views on unequal marriages were so very strict.” “I’m going to give you a tip,” said Cyril. “You mustn’t allow that it is unequal, on any account. Play the _grand seigneur anglais_ for all you’re worth when you meet him. Be impassive, bored, contemptuously tolerant of all you see, and let him know that you have much better at home.” “Anything else?”