“Do they know all?”
“Yes! The King, my father, has announced everything concerning our marriage, not only to the Government, but by special ‘manifesto’ to the People. I did not think he would be so brave!”
“Or so true!” said Gloria, her eyes darkening and deepening with the intensity of her thought. “Let me read this strange news, Humphry!”
He gave her the papers,—and a few tears sparkled on her lashes like diamonds and fell, as with a beating heart she read of the complete triumph of the King over the Socialist and Revolutionary party,—of his march with the multitude to the Government House,—of his bold denunciation of Carl Pérousse, ending in the utter overthrow of a fraudulent Ministry,—and of his determination to renounce for five years, one half his royal revenues in order to personally assist the deficit in the National Exchequer.
“He is, in very truth a King!” she said, looking up with flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes,—“Surely the noblest in the world!”
Prince Humphry’s face expressed wonderment as well as admiration.
“I have been utterly mistaken in him,”—he confessed,—“Or else, something has greatly changed his ideas. I should never have deemed him capable of running so much risk of his position, or of showing so much heroism, candour and self-sacrifice. All my life I have been accustomed to see him more or less indifferent to everything but his own pleasure, and more or less careless of the griefs of others; but now it seems as if he had kept himself back on purpose, only to declare his true character more openly and boldly in the end!”
Gloria read on, with eagerness and interest, till she came to the King’s ‘manifesto’ regarding his son’s marriage with ‘a daughter of the People.’ She pointed to this expression with the tapering, rosy point of her delicate little finger.
“That is me!” she said; “I am a daughter of the People! I am proud of the name!”
“You are my wife!” said the Prince; “And you are Crown Princess of the realm!”