quiet obscurity lay
before her the place where she had met and parted with her lover. Near
her sat the princess, with the governor, Baron Taube, and the elder
Gyllenstierna, at a card table.

'Is there any news from Norway?' asked Ulrika, shuffling the cards.

'From Armfelt's corps,' answered Taube, 'we have been a long time
without intelligence,--but, as a friend writes me, the king has taken
an important battery before Frederickshall.'

'It is well that some one yet holds correspondence in Sweden, said
Ulrika with bitterness, hastily dealing the cards. 'My husband is not
permitted to write openly upon the affairs of the campaign, and of the
communications of my brother nobody in the capital is permitted to have
a glimpse;--and least of all myself, who have the misfortune to be a
woman.'

'Was our loss great?' asked old Gyllenstierna, assorting his cards.

'They speak of seven hundred,' answered the governor: 'and the loss
would have been still greater and perhaps wholly in vain, had not the
king himself and a young volunteer placed themselves at the head of the
faltering troops and led them on to victory.'

A delightful anticipation thrilled the bosom of the listening Georgina.
And in the self-forgetfulness of love, she was even upon the point of
stepping forward and asking the narrator the unbecoming question of the
name of the volunteer, when the father of her beloved spared her the
pain of witnessing the courtier's contemptuous smile, by himself
putting the question.

'My informant named him Gyllenstierna,' answered Taube: 'but as your
excellency's son has gone to Armfelt's camp, I suppose I must have
misunderstood him.'

'Who knows!' murmured the old count, calling to mind the last
unavailing request of his son; and in pondering upon all the
possibilities of the case he lost his game.

'Were it not for that,' proceeded Taube, 'I should have much pleasure
in congratulating your excellency. The king advanced the brave
volunteer to the grade of captain of the guards upon the spot.'

'My hero! my Arwed!' exulted Georgina in her heart, and her white hand
waved a fond kiss towards the west.

'Such transient gleams of military success give me more anxiety than
pleasure,' said Ulrika. 'They decide not the main question, and serve
only to increase my brother's obstinacy. His game is lost beyond
remedy. Continued misfortune would finally open his eyes and induce him
to take the only course by which he can save