arkness
like a beautiful vision.

When we got back to our quarters, which we did without accident,
Curtis asked me jocularly what I was thinking about.

'I am wondering,' I answered, 'on what principle it is arranged
that some people should find beautiful queens to fall in love
with them, while others find nobody at all, or worse than nobody;
and I am also wondering how many brave men's lives this night's
work will cost.' It was rather nasty of me, perhaps, but somehow
all the feelings do not evaporate with age, and I could not help
being a little jealous of my old friend's luck. Vanity, my sons;
vanity of vanities!

On the following morning, Good was informed of the happy occurrence,
and positively rippled with smiles that, originating somewhere
about the mouth, slowly travelled up his face like the rings
in a duckpond, till they flowed over the brim of his eyeglass
and went where sweet smiles go. The fact of the matter, however,
was that not only was Good rejoiced about the thing on its own
merits but also for personal reasons. He adored Sorais quite
as earnestly as Sir Henry adored Nyleptha, and his adoration
had not altogether prospered. Indeed, it had seemed to him and
to me also that the dark Cleopatra-like queen favoured Curtis
in her own curious inscrutable way much more than Good. Therefore
it was a relief to him to learn that his unconscious rival was
permanently and satisfactorily attached in another direction.
His face fell a little, however, when he was told that the whole
thing was to be kept as secret as the dead, above all from Sorais
for the present, inasmuch as the political convulsion which would
follow such an announcement at the moment would be altogether
too great to face and would very possibly, if prematurely made,
shake Nyleptha from her throne.

That morning we again attended in the Throne Hall, and I could
not help smiling to myself when I compared the visit to our last,
and reflecting that, if walls could speak, they would have strange
tales to tell.

What actresses women are! There, high upon her golden throne,
draped in her blazoned 'kaf' or robe of state, sat the fair Nyleptha,
and when Sir Henry came in a little late, dressed in the full
uniform of an officer of her guard and humbly bent himself before
her, she merely acknowledged his salute with a careless nod and
turned her head coldly aside. It was a very large Court, for
not only did the signing of the laws attract ma