But he grew genuinely fond of Helene in a brotherly way, and was as proud as her mother when she began to show unmistakable signs of returning health. When she refused breakfast one day, and the Grand-Duchess only waited until she was out of sight to weep, Usk showed no disappointment. His prescience was rewarded in the course of the morning, when Helene confessed suddenly that she was “so hungry,” and asked him to fetch her something to eat. Then there was the day when for the first time an expedition was undertaken beyond the grounds, and Helene proudly introduced him to one of her friends, the wife of a goatherd who lived on the mountain-side. The good woman set before her visitors a meal of black bread and goats’ milk; and this simple fare, which Usk privately thought very nasty, Helene ate and enjoyed, and the Grand-Duchess wept again, but this time her tears were of joy. Now that Helene was sufficiently recovered to take longer walks, her mother thought it advisable to consider the conventions once more. At first she succeeded in putting a veto on any distant expeditions by the plea that Helene would overtask her strength, but when Usk had suggested taking a pony with them, on which she could ride when she was tired, it was necessary to provide suitable companions. Neither the Grand-Duchess nor the Queen were equal to the exertion involved, but the former invited her youngest son and his wife to pay a visit to Lauterbach. Prince Franz Immanuel had been educated in England, and Usk and he had been contemporaries at Eton for some years, so that they had many interests in common, while Princess Theresia, the daughter of Félicia’s uncle, Don Florian of Arragon, was so fond of things English that she was known at the Pannonian Court as the Anglomaniac. To her the Grand-Duchess had divulged her scheme concerning Usk and Helene as soon as it was formed, hoping to gain one firm ally, and the event proved that her object had been attained. The elder children of the Grand-Duchess, to whom the secret had not been revealed, were already writing from their married homes to inquire suspiciously why “that man Mortimer’s nephew” was being thrown so much with Lenchen, and prophesying that complications would occur; but Princess Resi was an ardent supporter of the match, and insisted that her husband should share her views. He had been inclined at first to adopt the natural Schwarzwald-Molzau attitude, and scout the idea of a _mésalliance_; but he and his wife were a most devoted couple, and she fairly talked him over. Plied all day and every day with arguments in favour of love-matches, unequal marriages, unions in which the parties were of different nationalities, and harassed by the unreasonable conduct of Princess Resi, who insisted on taking any opposition as a reflection on herself or her mother, whose admission into the house of Albret-Arragon had only been secured by her immense dowry, he yielded at last, and when they arrived at Lauterbach his