.

"Did you tell the Prince that?" my mother asked.

"The Prince," I answered, "was not in a state to listen to anything that
I might have said, not even to anything of importance."

"Fancy if he'd known! On his death-bed!" was Victoria's very audible
whisper.

My mother looked at me with a despairing expression. I am unwilling to
do either her or my sister an injustice, but I wondered then how much
thought they were giving to the old friend we had lost. It seemed to me
that they thought little of the man we knew, the man himself; not grief,
but fear was dominant in them. Wetter's saying, "You're king at last,"
came into my mind. Perhaps their mood was intelligible enough and did
not want excuse. They had seen in Hammerfeldt my schoolmaster; his hand
was gone, and could no longer guide or restrain me. To one a son, to the
other a younger brother, by both I was counted incapable of standing
alone or choosing my own path. Hammerfeldt was gone; Wetter remained;
the Countess von Sempach remained. There was the new position. The
Prince's death then might well be to them so great a calamity as to lose
its rank among sorrows, regrets for the past be ousted by terror for the
future, and the loss of an ally obliterate grief for a friend.

"But you know his wishes and his views," said my mother. "I hope that
they will have an increased sacredness for you now."

"He may be looking down on you from heaven," added Victoria, folding her
handkerchief so as to get a dry part uppermost.

I could not resist this provocation: I smiled.

"If it is so, Victoria," I remarked, "nobody will be more surprised than
the Prince himself."

Victoria was very much offended. She conceived herself to have added an
effective touch: I ridiculed her.

"You might at least pretend to have a little decent feeling," she cried.

"Come, come, my dear, don't let's squabble over him before he's cold,"
said I, rising. "Have you anything else to say to me, mother?"

At this instant my brother-in-law entered. He smelt very strongly of
tobacco, but wore an expression of premeditated misery. He came up to
me, holding out his hand.

"Good evening," said I.

"Poor Hammerfeldt!" he murmured. "Poor Hammerfeldt! What a blow! How
lost you must feel!"

He had been talking over the matter with Victoria. That was beyond
doubt.

"I happen to have been thinking," I rejoined, "more of him than of
myself."

"Of course, of course," muttered William Adolphus in