He motioned with his hand to the seat, and the Princess again hastened to place herself by his side.
"Now when I see your Highness before me in the bright bloom of youth, richly gifted and fitted to confer the greatest happiness on others and to partake of it yourself, I cannot forbear thinking that it is wrong for you to be debarred from the pleasures of home."
"I have enjoyed this happiness and have lost it," exclaimed the Princess. "Now I have accustomed myself to the thought of renouncing much. I seek for myself a compensation which even you will not consider unworthy."
"There is a difference between us of more than fifty years. A mode of life, proper for me, an unimportant man, may not be permitted the daughter of a princely house. I beg the permission of my beloved Princess," he continued, with a gentle voice, "to draw aside to-day the curtain which has covered a dark image of your early youth. You were witness of the scene which separated the Sovereign from your illustrious mother."
"It is a dark recollection," whispered the Princess, looking up anxiously at the old lord; "my mother was reproaching the Sovereign,--it was something concerning the fateful Pavilion. The Sovereign got into a state of excitement that was fearful. I, then but a little girl, ran up and embraced the knees of my mother; he dragged me off, and--" the Princess covered her eyes. The old lord made a motion to stop her, and continued:
"The after-effect of the scene was ruinous to the life of a noble woman, and also to that of yourself. Then for the first time the diseased irritability which has since darkened the Sovereign's spirit displayed itself; from that day the Sovereign sees in you the living witness of his guilt and his disease. He has for years endeavored to wipe away from you that impression by kindness and attentions, but he has never believed himself to be successful. Shame, suspicion, and fear have continually ruined his relations with you. He will not let you go away from him, because he fears that in your confidence to another man you might betray what he would fain conceal from himself. He unwillingly gave in to the first marriage, and he will oppose a second, for he does not wish to see your Highness married again. But in the hours when dark clouds lie over his extraordinary spirit, he rejoices in the thought that your Highness might lose the right of secretly reproaching him. The thought that he did an injury to the princely dignity of his wife gnaws within him, and he is now occupied with the idea that your Highness might under certain circumstances forget your position as princess."
"He hopes in vain," exclaimed the Princess, excitedly. "Never will I allow myself to be degraded by an unworthy passion; it has not been without effect that I have been the child of your cares."
"What is unworthy of a princess?" asked the High Steward, reflectively. "That your Highness would keep yourself free from the little passions which are excited in the quadrille of a masked ball there can be no doubt. But intellectual pastime with subjects of great interest might also disturb the life of a woman. Easily does the most refined intellectual enjoyment pass into extravagance. More than once has the greatest danger of a woman been when under powerful external excitement, she has felt herself to be higher, freer, nobler than her wont. It is difficult to listen to entrancing music and to preserve oneself from a warm interest in the artist who has produced it for us."
The Princess looked down.
"Supposing the case," continued the High Steward, "in which a diseased man, in bitter humor, should meditate and work for such an object, the sound person should guard himself from doing his will."