"Are you the Princess Isoline?" said Mark, not answering the question; "I think you must be, you are so beautiful."
"I am the Princess Isoline," said the lady; "walk a little way with me."
Mark turned with the lady and walked back towards the palace. After a moment or two he said: "I am not happy at Joyeuse, I am very miserable, I want to run away."
"What makes you so unhappy? Are they not kind to you? The Prince is very kind, and the children are good children—I have always thought."
"They are all very kind, too kind to me," said the boy. "I cannot make you understand why I am so miserable, I cannot tell myself—the Prince is worse than all——"
"Why is the Prince the worst of all?" said the lady, in a very gentle voice.
"All the rest I know are wrong," replied the boy, passionately—"the actors, the Signorina, the pages, and all; but when the Prince looks at me with his quiet smile—when the look comes into his eyes as though he could see through time even into eternity—when he looks at me in his kindly, pitying way—I begin to doubt. Oh, Highness, it is terrible to doubt! Do you think that the Prince is right?"
The Princess was silent for a moment or two; it was not that she did not understand the boy, for she understood him very well.
"No, I think you are right and not the Prince," she said at length, in her quiet voice.
There was a pause: neither seemed to know what to say next. They had now nearly reached the end of the avenue next the palace; the Princess stopped.