ws to bring,
he would have approached more rapidly. A sign, a gesture, a shout would
have informed her that he was bearing something cheering.

But there was nothing of this kind.

He did not raise his hat until he stood directly in front of her, and
while mopping his broad, clamp brow and plump cheeks with his
handkerchief, she read in his features the confirmation of her worst
fears.

Now in his grave voice, which sounded still deeper than usual, he uttered
a curt "Well, it can't be helped," and shrugged his shoulders
sorrowfully.

This gesture destroyed her last hope. Unable to control herself longer,
she cried out in the husky voice whose hoarse tone was increased by her
intense agitation: "I see it in your face, Doctor; I must be prepared for
the worst."

"Would to Heaven I could deny it!" he answered in a hollow tone; but
Barbara urged him to speak and conceal nothing from her, not even the
harshest news.

The leech obeyed.

With sincere compassion he saw how her face blanched at his information
that, owing to the pressure of duties which the commencement of the war
imposed upon him, his Majesty would be unable to visit her here. But
when, to sweeten the bitter potion, he had added that when her throat was
well again, and her voice had regained its former melody, the monarch
would once more gladly listen to her, he was startled; for, instead of
answering, she merely shrugged her shoulders contemptuously, while her
face grew corpselike in its pallor. He would have been best pleased to
end his report here, but she could not be spared the suffering to which
she was doomed, and pity demanded that the torture should be ended as
quickly as possible. So, to raise her courage, he began with the
Emperor's congratulations, and while her eyes were sparkling brightly and
her pale cheeks were crimsoned by a fleeting flush, he went on, as
considerately as he could, to inform her of the Emperor's resolution, not
neglecting while he did so to place it in a milder light by many a
palliating remark.

Barbara, panting for breath, listened to his report without interrupting
him; but as the physician thought he perceived in the varying expression
of her features and the wandering glance with which she listened tokens
that she did not fully understand what the Emperor required of her, he
summed up his communications once more.

"His Majesty," he concluded, "was ready to recognise as his own the young
life to be expected, i