n we
return to rule and be ruled, bartering slavery in one matter for
dominion in another, and working out the equilibrium of power.

But after my procession in the cathedral, when I was giving thanks for
rescue from a death that had never been terrible and now seemed remote
and impossible, I saw my countess. She was nearly opposite to me; her
husband was not with her: he was on guard in the nave with his regiment.
I wanted to make some sign to her, but I had been told that everybody
would be looking at me. When I was crowned, "everybody" had meant Krak,
and I had feared no other eye. I was more self-conscious now. I was
particularly alert that my mother should observe nothing. But the
Countess and I exchanged a glance; she nodded cautiously; almost
immediately afterward I saw her wipe her eyes. I should have liked to
talk to her, tell her that I liked being a king rather better, and give
her the glad tidings that the dominion of Krak had ended; but I got no
chance of doing anything of the sort, being carried away without coming
nearer to her.

Victoria was in very low spirits that evening. It had suddenly come upon
her that she was to be left to endure Krak all alone. Victoria and I
were not somehow as closely knit together as we had been; she was now
thirteen, growing a tall girl, and I was but a little boy. Yet our
relations were not, I imagine, quite what they would have been between
brother and sister of such relative ages in an ordinary case. The
authority which elder sisters may be seen so readily to ape and assume
was never claimed by Victoria; my mother would not have endured such
presumption for a moment. I think Victoria regarded me as a singularly
ignorant person, who yet, by fortune's freak, was invested with a
strange importance and the prospect at least of great and indefinite
power. She therefore took a good deal of pains to make me understand her
point of view, and to convert me to her opinions. Her present argument
was that she also ought to be relieved from Krak.

"Krak was mother's governess till mother was eighteen," I reminded her.

"Awful!" groaned poor Victoria.

"In fact, mother's never got rid of Krak at all."

"Oh, that's different. I shouldn't in the least mind keeping Krak as my
daughter's governess," said Victoria. "That would be rather fun."

"It would be very cruel, considering what Krak does," I objected.

Dim hintings of the grown-up state were in Victoria; she looked a little