portrait and a lock of her hair.
When, however, the embassy appears to fetch home the bride, she sends back
the message that she is not disposed to be married. Upon receipt of this
word the Prince and two friends, Florian and Cyril, steal away to seek
the Princess, and learn on reaching her father's court that she has
established a Woman's College on a distant estate. Having got letters
authorizing them to visit the Princess, they ride into her domain, where
they determine to go dressed like girls and apply for admission as
students in the College. They arrive in disguise, and are admitted. On the
first day the young men enroll themselves as students of Lady Psyche, who
recognizes Florian as her brother and agrees not to expose them, since--by
a law of the College inscribed above the gates, which darkness has kept
them from seeing--the penalty of their discovery would be death. Melissa,
a student, overhears them, and is bound over to keep the secret. Lady
Blanche, mother of Melissa and rival to Lady Psyche, also learns of the
alarming invasion, and remains silent for sinister reasons of her own. On
the second day the principal personages picnic in a wood. At dinner Cyril
sings a song that is better fit for the smoking room than for the ears of
ladies; the Prince, in his anger, betrays his sex by a too masculine
reproof; and dire confusion is the result. The Princess in her flight
falls into the river, from which she is rescued by the Prince. Cyril and
Lady Psyche escape together, but the Prince and Florian are brought before
the Princess. At this important moment despatches are brought from her
father saying that the Prince's father has surrounded her palace with
soldiers, taken him prisoner, and holds him as a hostage. The Prince,
after pleading to deaf ears, is sent away at dawn with Florian, and goes
with him to the camp. Meantime during the night, the Princess's three
brothers have come to her aid with an army. An agreement is reached to
decide the case and end the war by a tournament between the brothers, with
fifty men, on one side; the Prince and his two friends, with fifty men, on
the other. This happens on the third day. The Prince and his men are
vanquished, and he himself is badly wounded.

But the Princess is now gradually to discover that she has "overthrown
more than her enemy,"--that she has defeated yet saved herself. She has
said of Lady Psyche's little child:--

"I took it for an hour in mine own bed