the King, at the end of
the short interview. "I should like to feel that his interests will be
looked after, not only here, but by you and yours. We have a certain
element here that is troublesome."

And Karl, with Hedwig in his mind, had promised.

"His interests shall be mine, sir," he had said.

He had bent over the bed then, and raised the thin hand to his lips. The
interview was over. In the anteroom the King's Master of the Horse, the
Chamberlain, and a few other gentlemen stood waiting, talking together
in low tones. But the Chancellor, who had gone in with Karl and then
retired, stood by a window, with his arms folded over his chest, and
waited. He put resolutely out of his mind the face of the dying man
on his pillows, and thought only of this thing which he--Mettlich had
brought about. There was no yielding in his face or in his heart, no
doubt of his course. He saw, instead of the lovers loitering in the
Place, a new and greater kingdom, anarchy held down by an ironshod heel,
peace and the fruits thereof, until out of very prosperity the people
grew fat and content.

He saw a boy king, carefully taught, growing into his responsibilities
until, big with the vision of the country's welfare, he should finally
ascend the throne. He saw the river filled with ships, carrying
merchandise over the world and returning with the wealth of the world.
Great buildings, too, lifted their heads on his horizon, a dream city,
with order for disorder, and citizens instead of inhabitants.

When at last he stirred and sighed, it was because his old friend, in
his bed in the next room, would see nothing of all this, and that he
himself could not hope for more than the beginning, before his time came
also.

The first large dinner for months was given that night at the Palace,
to do King Karl all possible honor. The gold service which had been
presented to the King by the Czar of Russia was used. The anticipatory
gloom of the Court was laid aside, and jewels brought from vaults were
worn for the first time in months. Uniforms of various sorts, but all
gorgeous, touched fine shoulders, and came away, bearing white, powdery
traces of the meeting. The greenhouses at the summer palace had been
sacked for flowers and plants. The corridor from the great salon to the
dining-hall; always a dreary passage, had suddenly become a fairy path
of early-spring bloom. Even Annunciata, hung now with ropes of pearls,
her hair dressed high for