ter smile. "If I were in Styria I
should be beheaded, I daresay, or--or knouted, or something. Oh, I know
what Styria means! Krak taught me that."

"I wish the Baroness was here," observed the Princess.

"You'd tell her to beat me, I suppose?" flashed out my sister.

"If you were three years younger----" began my mother with perfect
outward composure. Victoria interrupted her passionately.

"Oh, never mind my age. I'm a child still. Come and beat me!" she cried,
assuming the air of an Iphigenia.

To this day I am of opinion that she ran a risk in giving this
invitation; it was well on the cards that the Princess might have
accepted it. Indeed had it been Styria--but it was not Styria. My mother
turned to me with a cold smile.

"You perceive," said she, "the spirit in which your sister meets me
because I object to her compromising herself with this wretched baron.
She accuses me of persecution, and talks as though I were an
executioner."

I had been looking very curiously at Victoria. She was in a
dressing-gown, having been called, apparently, from her bedroom; her
hair was over her shoulders. She looked most prettily woe-begone--like
Juliet before her angry father, or, as I say, Iphigenia before the
knife. In a moment she broke out again.

"Nobody feels for me," she complained. "What can Augustin know of it?"

"I know," observed my mother. "But although I know----"

"Oh, you've forgotten," cried Victoria scornfully.

For a moment my mother flushed. I was glad on all accounts that Victoria
did not repeat her previous invitation now. On the contrary, when she
had looked at Princess Heinrich, she gave a sudden frightened sob,
rushed across the room, and flung herself on her knees at my feet.

"You're the king!" she cried. "Protect me, protect me!"

Throughout all this very painful interview I seemed to hear as it were
echoes of the romances which I had read on Victoria's recommendation;
the reminiscence was particularly strong in this last exclamation.
However, it is not safe to conclude that feelings are not sincere
because they are expressed in conventional phrases. These formulas are
moulds into which our words run easily; though the moulds be hollow, the
stuff that fills them may be solid enough.

"Why, you don't want to marry him?" I exclaimed, much embarrassed at
being prematurely forced into functions of a _pere de famille_.

"I'll never marry anybody else," moaned Victoria. My mother's face was
th