ystal Palace."

"But now she hates me," said Nikky's heart, and dropped about the
distance of three buttons. "She hates me. I saw it in her eyes this
morning. God!"

"We might as well play ball now."

Prince Ferdinand William Otto turned away from the parapet with a sigh.
This strange quiet that filled the Palace seemed to have attacked Nikky
too. Otto hated quiet.

They played ball, and the Crown Prince took a lesson in curves. But on
his third attempt, he described such a compound--curve that the ball
disappeared over an adjacent part of the roof, and although Nikky did
some blood-curdling climbing along gutters, it could not be found.

It was then that the Majordomo, always a marvelous figure in crimson
and gold, and never seen without white gloves--the Majordomo bowed in
a window, and observed that if His Royal Highness pleased, His Royal
Highness's luncheon was served.

In the shrouded room inside the windows, however, His Royal Highness
paused and looked around.

"I've been here before," he observed. "These were my father's rooms.
My mother lived here, too. When I am older, perhaps I can have them. It
would be convenient on account of my practicing curves on the roof. But
I should need a number of balls."

He was rather silent on his way back to the schoolroom. But once he
looked up rather wistfully at Nikky.

"If they were living," he said, "I am pretty sure they would take me out
to-day."

Olga Loschek had found the day one of terror. Annunciata had demanded
her attendance all morning, had weakened strangely and demanded
fretfully to be comforted.

"I have been a bad daughter," she would say. "It was my nature. I was
warped and soured by wretchedness."

"But you have not been a bad daughter," the Countess would protest,
for the thousandth time. "You have done your duty faithfully. You have
stayed here when many another would have been traveling on the Riviera,
or--"

"It was no sacrifice," said Annunciata, in her peevish voice. "I loathe
traveling. And now I am being made to suffer for all I have done. He
will die, and the rest of us--what will happen to us?" She shivered.

The Countess would take the cue, would enlarge on the precautions for
safety, on the uselessness of fear, on the popularity of the Crown
Prince. And Annunciata, for a time at least, would relax. In her new
remorse she made frequent visits to the sickroom, passing, a long, thin
figure, clad in black, through lines of bowing