, does it not?"

"Very strange indeed," I answered. "You have not been back to Pannonia
since that dreadful time?"

As I said it the folly of the remark became apparent to me. Was it not
my own father who had sent the Prince of Lilienhoehe into exile? And had
not the latter, as soon as the Ramonyi dynasty was overthrown, stepped
into the breach and attempted to seize the throne for himself? That for
the moment I had embarrassed her I could see. However, she evaded it
with a cleverness that showed she was not wanting in that rarest of all
gifts--tact.

"We have been living in England for the last seven years," she replied,
with a candour that concealed her real feelings. "My father declares
that he is getting too old to move about, and sometimes I think he will
never cross the Channel again."

I did not say so to her, though I thought it, that I deemed it a
fortunate thing, not only for himself, but also for Pannonia, that he
had come to so sensible a conclusion. How foolish and futile the whole
business appeared when looked at through the diminishing glass of years!
The feud between the two families, the constant quarrels, the scarcely
veiled hatred on both sides, and then the last outbreak and its
consequences! My father had sent Lilienhoehe into exile only to follow
himself, a few days later. And now, strangest part of all, here was I,
Paul of Pannonia, talking to Ottilie of Lilienhoehe in the garden of the
Heir Apparent to the throne that had given us both shelter.

When Fate takes it into her head to jest, she does not do so in a
half-hearted fashion. After a little while I inquired how it was I had
not met her before.

"I was only presented last year," she answered; "and this season we were
late in coming to town. Indeed, had it not been for the Prince of
Liedenvald's visit to England, I doubt very much whether we should have
come at all."

For once in my life I was grateful to my cousin Wilhelm.

Really she was beautiful. I remembered what a dainty, fragile child she
had seemed that day when I had led her hand-in-hand, after the accident,
to see the statues in the great hall at Pannonia. In that respect she
had scarcely altered. Her beauty seemed of a different description from
any I had met before. Her skin was so transparent, her hands and feet so
small, her head so daintily poised, that the most fastidious critic
could scarcely have discovered a fault in her. Later on she inquired for
Max, and I furni