“Ah, I guess I’ll have to burn the Castle down. Then I can build it up again as I want it!” said Félicia airily, leaving Usk with the uncomfortable conviction that she had been joking all the time, and that he had made a foolish display of strong feeling, and invoked his authority quite unnecessarily. However, it pleased Félicia so much to have made him angry at last, that she treated him better for the next few days, until the tension became acute once more under the influence of a stray piece of news from the Riviera. In answer to Cyril’s telegram, Mr Hicks had cabled that there was nothing to prevent the trustees from supporting Félicia’s claim, if she did not consider her father’s strongly expressed wish as binding on her, and he added such details as to the papers and other objects left in his charge by Mr Steinherz as enabled Cyril to draw up a statement at once. The relationship between his wife and the royal family of Arragon gave him the opportunity of proceeding privately, much to his satisfaction, for expecting the whole affair to end in smoke, he did not care for it to be canvassed in the European press. Félicia would have preferred publicity, for she had been looking forward confidently to becoming the heroine of the sensation-mongering American papers, and felt that she was being defrauded of the interviews and portraits that were her due. She yielded, however, to the strong pressure brought to bear on her by Maimie, who pointed out that a Steinherz boom would certainly alienate King Michael, not knowing that King Michael himself was on the verge of rendering this precaution unnecessary by carrying out too faithfully his part of the programme. It was a paragraph in a weekly society paper which made his doings known at Llandiarmid. Queen Ernestine brought the paper to her husband when it reached the Castle, and pointed out to him anxiously the “Lady’s Letter from the Riviera.” “Listen to this, Cyril,” she said. “‘Among last week’s arrivals at Nice was the young King of Thracia, travelling _incognito_ as Baron von Neuburg. He may be seen every day in close attendance on the pretty Grand-Duchess Sonya, who is making a short stay at the Conciliation with her father, the Grand-Duke Eugen of Scythia, and the announcement of their betrothal is daily expected. It is well known that the attachment between them is of long standing, but that the course of true love was interrupted by the attempt of the Dowager Queen and her English husband to marry King Michael to the latter’s niece, a daughter of the Marquis of Caerleon. Happily the young lady was possessed of less ambition or more good sense than her august relations, and made a love-match with a commoner a year or two ago, so that her unwilling suitor is at liberty to return to the real object of his affections.’”