er far absent from her heart.

"I am having just now," the King went on, "a very trying and disturbing
time--in ways that I don't want to talk about. Do try, child, not to add
to my anxieties."

Charlotte, feeling compunction working within her, thought hard for a
while. "Before he comes----" she said, and stopped. "Papa, when does he
come?"

"Not till after the winter session has opened--perhaps about Christmas."

"Well, before he comes, then, I want to go away quite by myself for
three weeks or a fortnight, and then--I'll think about it. If, when the
time comes, you want me to see him I will, and I promise not to be rude
to him. But he shan't think that I have been waiting for him, or that I
want to have anything to do with him; I shall make that quite plain."

"Then I do hope that you know what not being rude means," put in the
Queen; "for I must say that doesn't sound like it."

"Oh, I will provide a safe margin," replied Charlotte. "He shall have
nothing to complain of. If I do see him I will be as nice to him as ever
I can; much nicer than you have been to me!"

"Now, my dear, don't begin scuffling again!" said her father
deprecatingly. "Very well; that's settled then."

"And you will give me that fortnight?"

"Longer, my dear, if you wish."

"No," said the Queen, "a fortnight is quite enough, if she means to
spend it pretending to be a Trojan woman."

"If I stay away longer than a fortnight," said Charlotte, "you can send
and fetch me." Then she turned to her father. "I am very sorry, papa,
ever to have to pain you: but you don't know how dreadful it feels if
one isn't allowed to be oneself."

"Oh, don't I?" exclaimed his Majesty. "My dear, if you knew what being a
king was really like--but there, we won't talk politics now! By the way,
as you came back before we did, do you happen to know what has become of
Max?"

"I haven't seen him," said Charlotte with a certain air of discretion;
"but I had a line from him in answer to one I wrote on my arrival: and
he does seem to have been doing something at last."

"What has he been doing?"

"Getting his head broken."

"Good gracious!" exclaimed the Queen. "However did he come to do that?"

"He says he was working among the strikers and got hit. Nobody knows
about it, and he doesn't want it known. He writes that he is being very
well looked after at some private nursing place."

"Did he give you the address?" inquired her Majesty suspiciously.

"No