CHAPTER II.

"How radiant you look!" said Countess Inna, as she met the doctor.

"Perhaps I do," he replied, "for I've just beheld that divine sight,--a
heart overflowing with pure love of its fellow-beings;--but excuse me
for a moment!" he said, interrupting himself and leaving the countess,
while he went into an adjoining apartment and dispatched a telegram to
Doctor Sixtus, instructing him to prepare himself for an eight days'
journey, and to come to the summer palace forthwith. He then returned
to the countess, to whom he gave an account of what had happened.

"Shall I tell you what I think?" asked the countess.

"You know very well that none dare say you 'nay'."

"Well, then, I can't help thinking that it was far better in olden
times; for then royal children were born in some lonely, out-of-the-way
palace, as quietly as if it were to be kept a secret--"

The doctor interrupted her: "You are indeed a true child of your
father. For, although my dear friend Eberhard was full of strange
fancies during his younger years, he would at times manifest sudden and
surprising diffidence."

"Ah, do tell me of my father! I know so little about him."

"I've known nothing of him for many years. Of course you know that he
has broken with me, because I am at court; but, in the olden times, in
our youthful, enthusiastic days--"

"Then you, too, were once enthusiastic!"

"I was; but not to so great a degree as your father. When I see you, it
seems as if his ideal had become realized. In those days, when I was a
young army surgeon, and he a still younger officer, we would indulge in
fantasy pictures of the future, and what it might have in store for us.
He never thought of a beloved one, or a wife, but would at one bound,
as it were, clear all that lay between, and indulge himself with brain
pictures of a child; a daughter, fresh, tender and lovely beyond
comparison. And now, when I behold you, I look upon his ideal."

"And so my father's only ideal was a child?" asked Irma with pensive
air, and looking earnestly into the doctor's eyes, "and yet for all
that, he left his children to grow up among strangers, and all that I
know of him I am obliged to learn from the lips of others. But I don't
care to speak of myself at present, dear doctor. I have a presentiment
of the queen's secret. I think I know what makes her so quiet and
reserved."

"My dear child," said the doctor, "if you really have a
p