! Young though I was, the shock of her death
was the most awful, I think, that I ever had, perhaps--save one. It
was all the greater because I had no brother or sister to share my
grief with me. Yet I loved my father very dearly; he was a good and
great man, and much reverenced by his people. There was no talk of
revolutions nor republics in those days; the people were content under
a mild rule.

"The years went on, and I became a woman, nurtured in the magnificence
of a rich palace, yet imbued with the fear of God, for my father was a
good man, and had me well taught my faith. I grew up, I think, with
the brightness of my dead mother's spirit pervading me, for I avoided
many of the pitfalls of youth.

"My royal father, often taking my face between his hands, would look
into my eyes, and thank God that I had not in me the wickedness of the
Dolphbergs, the race from which we sprang. It was when I was
three-and-twenty that a sudden chill, caught by my father when out
hunting, produced a fever which robbed me of him, and I was left an
orphan; an orphan queen to reign over a nation.

"I was my father's only child; there was no Salic law to bar me. But
as the orphan is ever succoured by heaven, so was I in my lonely royal
state upheld by the counsels of a good and great man.

"Your grandfather, my child," she continued turning to Dolores, "the
old Don Silvio d'Alta.

"He had been my father's stay in all his troubles; the d'Altas were a
race of diplomatists, and when death claimed him your father, Don Juan,
took his place."

A soft look came into her eyes as she sat with Dolores' hand in hers, a
far-away look; her thoughts were in the times she spoke of.

"Those were happy days, Dolores," she continued, "those first years
when your father and I ruled the people of Aquazilia. I had had a
reign of ten years when your grandfather died and young Don Juan took
the reins of government as my adviser; no one ever thought of
contesting his right to it. Was he not a d'Alta?

"He was but twenty-five and I barely nine years older when he became my
chancellor, and those ten years of ruling should have taught me
prudence as a queen had I but listened to Don Juan's counsels too. For
I know he loved me, loved me far too well perhaps and above my deserts.

"Had I had the prudence of an honest milkmaid who guards her honour as
by instinct, I might have reigned this day at Valoro, instead of being
the victim of a villain wh