d Charlotte, "I will tell him myself, then; you can't
prevent me doing that! No, I'm not going to be headstrong, or foolish,
or obstinate, or any of the things you said I was: now I've made the
exhibition of myself that I intended making, I'll be a lamb. If I like
him enough, and if he likes me enough, I'll marry him. But I shall have
to like him a great deal more than I do at present; and he will have to
want me very much more than it's possible for him to do until he has
seen me----"

"Oh, don't be so conceited, my dear!" said the Queen, her good-humor and
confidence beginning to be restored as she watched the fair flushed
face, and those queer attractive little gestures which made her
daughter's charm so irresistible.

"Before anything will induce me to say 'yes,'" concluded Charlotte.

And then, as though that finished the matter, and as though her own
naughty doings were of no further interest, she cried: "And now tell me
about the bomb!" And the Queen, who still liked to dwell upon that
episode of sights, sounds, and sensations, strangely mingled and
triumphantly concluded by a popular ovation such as she had never met
with in her life before, started off at once on a detailed narrative,
corrected now and then by the King's more sober commentary, and aided by
the eager questions of her daughter, who sat in close and fond contact
with both of them, mopping her eyes alternately with her mother's
handkerchief and her own.

"Oh! why wasn't I there?" she cried incautiously, when word came of the
great popular reception crowning all.

"Ah! why weren't you?" inquired the King waggishly. And when he had made
that little joke at her, Charlotte knew that all her naughty goings off
and goings on were comfortably forgiven and done with.

"But you know, papa," she said later, when for the first time they were
alone together, "I have found out quite a lot of things that _you_ know
nothing about: quite dreadful things! And they are going on behind your
back, and women are being put into prison for it."

All this was said very excitedly, and with great earnestness and
conviction.

"My dear," said the King, "it's no use your talking about those Women
Chartists to me."

"But I'm one of them," said Charlotte.

"Nonsense; you are not."

"I am. I signed on. I couldn't have gone to prison for them if I
hadn't."

"Do any of them know who you are?" cried the King, aghast. It was a
disturbing thought, for what a power it w