Prince."

The sick man lay back and dosed his eyes. Soon he slept. His comrade in
the next bed beckoned to a Sister.

"He has spoken," he said. "Either he recovers, or--he dies."

But again Haeckel did not die. He lived to do his part in the coming
crisis, to prove that even the great hands of Black Humbert on his
throat were not so strong as his own young spirit; lived, indeed, to
confront the Terrorist as one risen from the dead. But that day he lay
and slept, by curious irony the flower from Karl's banquet in a cup of
water beside him.

On the day before the Carnival, Hedwig had a visitor, none other than
the Countess Loschek. Hedwig, all her color gone now, her high spirit
crushed, her heart torn into fragments and neatly distributed between
Nikky, who had most of it, the Crown Prince, and the old King. Hedwig,
having given her permission to come, greeted her politely but without
enthusiasm.

"Highness!" said the Countess, surveying her. And then, "You poor
child!" using Karl's words, but without the same inflection, using,
indeed, the words a good many were using to Hedwig in those days.

"I am very tired," Hedwig explained. "All this fitting,
and--everything."

"I know, perhaps better than you think, Highness." Also something like
Karl's words. Hedwig reflected with bitterness that everybody knew, but
nobody helped her. And, as if in answer to the thought, Olga Loschek
came out plainly.

"Highness," she said, "may I speak to you frankly?"

"Please do," Hedwig replied. "Everybody does, anyhow. Especially when it
is something disagreeable."

Olga Loschek watched her warily. She knew the family as only the
outsider could know it; knew that Hedwig, who would have disclaimed the
fact, was like her mother in some things, notably in a disposition to
be mild until a certain moment, submissive, even acquiescent, and then
suddenly to become, as it were, a royalty and grow cold, haughty. But
if Hedwig was driven in those days, so was the Countess, desperate and
driven to desperate methods.

"I am presuming, Highness, on your mother's kindness to me, and your
own, to speak frankly."

"Well, go on," said Hedwig resignedly. But the next words brought her up
in her chair.

"Are you going to allow your life to be ruined?" was what the Countess
said.

Careful! Hedwig had thrown up her head and looked at her with hostile
eyes. But the next moment she had forgotten she was a princess, and the
granddaughter to the