Page:Anthony Hope - The Kings Mirror.djvu/47

 dominion in another, and working out the equilibrium of power.

But after my procession in the cathedral, when I was giving thanks for rescue from a death that had never been terrible and now seemed remote and impossible, I saw my countess. She was nearly opposite to me; her husband was not with her: he was on guard in the nave with his regiment. I wanted to make some sign to her, but I had been told that everybody would be looking at me. When I was crowned, "everybody" had meant Krak, and I had feared no other eye. I was more self-conscious now. I was particularly alert that my mother should observe nothing. But the Countess and I exchanged a glance; she nodded cautiously; almost immediately afterward I saw her wipe her eyes. I should have liked to talk to her, tell her that I liked being a king rather better, and give her the glad tidings that the dominion of Krak had ended; but I got no chance of doing anything of the sort, being carried away without coming nearer to her.

Victoria was in very low spirits that evening. It had suddenly come upon her that she was to be left to endure Krak all alone. Victoria and I were not somehow as closely knit together as we had been; she was now thirteen, growing a tall girl, and I was but a little boy. Yet our relations were not, I imagine, quite what they would have been between brother and sister of such relative ages in an ordinary case. The authority which elder sisters may be seen so readily to ape and assume was never claimed by Victoria; my mother would not have endured such presumption for a moment. I think Victoria regarded me as a singularly ignorant person, who yet, by fortune's freak, was invested with a