"Will you liberate him if I rob him of this belief? If I hurl the broken bond of my promised faith in his face? If I tell him that fear and cowardice have extinguished my love, and that I bid him farewell forever?"
"Write him this, and I promise you that he shall be free in a few months; but, understand me well, free to go where he will, but banished from my kingdom."
"Shall I write at once?" said she with an expression of utter indifference, and with icy tranquillity.
"Write; you will find all that is necessary on my escritoire."
She walked composedly to the table and seated herself. When she commenced writing, a deathly pallor came over her face; her breath came and went hurriedly and painfully. The king stood near, regarding her with an expression of deep solicitude.
"Have you finished?" said he, as she pushed the paper aside on which she had been writing.
"No," said she calmly, "it was only a tear that had fallen on the paper. I must begin again." And with perfect composure she took another sheet of paper, and began writing anew.
The king turned away with a sigh. He felt that if he longer regarded this pale, resigned face, he would lose sight of reason and duty, and restore to her her lover. He again advanced to the window, and looked thoughtfully out at the sky. "Is it possible? can it be?" he asked himself. "May I forget my duties as head of my family, and only remember that she is my sister, and that she is suffering and weeping? Must we then all pay for this empty grandeur, this frippery of earthly magnificence, with our heart's blood and our best hopes? And if I now deprive her of her dreams of happiness, what compensation can I offer? With what can I replace her hopes, her love, the happiness of her youth? At the best, with a little earthly splendor, with the purple and the crown, and eventually, perhaps, with my love. Yes, I will love her truly and cordially; she shall forgive the brother for the king's harshness; she shall—"
"I have finished," said the sad voice of his sister.
The king turned from the window; Amelia stood at the escritoire, holding the paper on which she had been writing in one hand, and sustaining herself by the table with the other.