Under this harassing and unhandsome treatment the Prime Minister was beginning to show age; and the coming session gave no promise that his cares in other respects would be less heavy than before; the Women Chartists were threatening a bigger outbreak in the near future, and Labor was now claiming to be freely supported from the rates either when out of work or when on strike. And when the Address to the Throne was being moved Labor and the Women Chartists would be in renewed agitation, asking for things which would make party politics quite impossible, and which it was therefore quite impossible for party politics to grant. If the Government had not still got that thoroughly unpopular House of Bishops to sit upon and coerce, things would be looking very black indeed.
III
And meanwhile where was the Princess Charlotte? Seven horrible days had gone by; and the inner circle of the detective force had been running about in padded slippers, so to speak, giving an accurate description of a lady whose name nobody knew, and who had been last seen in the vicinity of a college for women. Very privately and confidentially the titled lady who was the head of that institution had been interviewed; but her information was limited.
"She came to me only for one day," said the Principal, "though I thought she was intending to stay a week. I hardly know when I missed her; she had laid it down so very emphatically that she was to be left free and treated without ceremony, that really I did not trouble to look after her. Whenever she was here her Highness always mixed quite freely with the students; I know that with some of them she had made friends. They are far more likely to know what her plans were than I am."
Further inquiry in the direction thus indicated had to be carried on elsewhere, since the students had now separated for the vacation; and wherever inquiry was made the same stealthy secrecy had to be adopted; nobody must be allowed to suppose that the Princess Royal of Jingalo was missing. And so—on a sort of all-fours not at all conducive to speed—the quest went on.
On the fifth day, however, some relief had arrived to reduce the parental anxiety to bearable proportions. A letter, dropped from nowhere, bearing the metropolitan postmark, came to the King's hands. It gave only the barest, yet very essential information.
"Dearest papa," it ran, "I am quite well, and enjoying myself. I shall be back in a fortnight."
News of the arrival of this letter was immediately conveyed to the Constabulary Chief; and after three days of deep cogitation the absence of all reference to the outrage and to the risk run by those near and dear to her seemed to strike him as peculiar, and supplied him with what hitherto the police had lacked—a clue. And after two more days of strenuously directed search it bore fruit.
Late one afternoon the King was sitting at work in his study when his Comptroller-General entered hastily and in evident excitement; for though the King was then busily engaged in writing he presumed to interrupt, not waiting for the royal interrogating glance to give him his permission.
"I beg your pardon, sir," he said, in a tone of very urgent apology.