What a blessing, accordingly, that she could speak her joy in it! His face, meanwhile, at all events, was turned to her, and as she met his eyes again her joy went straight.

"It's success, father." "It's success.

And even this," he added as the Principino, appearing alone, deep within, piped across an instant greeting--"even this isn't altogether failure!" They went in to receive the boy, upon whose introduction to the room by Miss Bogle Charlotte and the Prince got up--seemingly with an impressiveness that had caused Miss Bogle not to give further effect to her own entrance.

She had retired, but the Principino's presence, by itself, sufficiently broke the tension--the subsidence of which, in the great room, ten minutes later, gave to the air something of the quality produced by the cessation of a sustained rattle.

Stillness, when the Prince and Princess returned from attending the visitors to their carriage, might have been said to be not so much restored as created; so that whatever next took place in it was foredoomed to remarkable salience.