of
his old life, and took but small interest in the country of his birth,
she was invariably well informed as to all that occurred. She was
fighting for her children's rights, and declared that she could never
rest, or know any peace of mind, until we had come to our own again.
Alas! for her happiness, poor soul, she did not live to see that day.

To Max and myself, accustomed as we were to the excitement of a Court,
the new life came as a decided, and by no means welcome, change.

It was not long, however, before we became reconciled to it, and by the
time we had been a year in England we could not only speak the language
fluently, but were to all appearances veritable sons of the soil. It was
a quiet life we led, but not an aimless one. The best of tutors were
engaged for us, and the smallest detail of our studies was attended to
by my mother with scrupulous exactness. We learnt to play cricket and
football, to fence and box like English boys; and in order that our
military education should not be neglected, it was decided that as soon
as we were old enough, Max and I should enter the British Army, for
which my mother entertained the greatest admiration. "The training," she
was accustomed to say, "will prove of the greatest value to them when
they return to Pannonia," and that seemed to settle it. Strangely
enough, however, Max did not hail the arrangement with the delight that
she had expected him to show. For some reason, as he grew up, his
disposition seemed to change. He, who was at first a headstrong,
impulsive boy, was developing into a silent and almost taciturn young
man. The notion that he would not succeed to the throne of his
ancestors, which he had conceived as a boy, now returned to him with
renewed force. It grew with him and thrived upon the thoughts that
fostered it. One little incident will be sufficient to show the hold
this strange idea had upon him. He was nineteen at the time; I was
scarcely sixteen. In appearance he was a tall, fine-looking young
fellow, with clean-cut features, dark resolute eyes, and black hair,
that he wore in a somewhat foreign fashion. While he was, to all intents
and purposes, a man, I was still a boy, fairly well grown it is true,
perhaps somewhat advanced for my years, but in many respects as inferior
to Max as a child of six is to a lad of twelve.

"My dear," said my father, one morning, addressing my mother, when we
sat at breakfast, which, _en passant_, we took toget