I pressed his hand, and the good Dean's, and then went quickly upstairs." Albert, as well as General Schreckenstein, was much affected.

He was losing his favourite child, whose opening intelligence had already begun to display a marked resemblance to his own--an adoring pupil, who, in a few years, might have become an almost adequate companion.

An ironic fate had determined that the daughter who was taken from him should be sympathetic, clever, interested in the arts and sciences, and endowed with a strong taste for memoranda, while not a single one of these qualities could be discovered in the son who remained.

For certainly the Prince of Wales did not take after his father.

Victoria's prayer had been unanswered, and with each succeeding year it became more obvious that Bertie was a true scion of the House of Brunswick.