place, and strap the iron-stand fast, giving the warm-hooded cot room to swing.  The keen sensations of a return to health amid unwonted scenes made things magical to her.  When she beheld our low green Devon hills she signalled for help to rise, and ‘That is England!’ she said, summoning to her beautiful clear eyeballs the recollection of her first desire to see my country.  Her petition was that the yacht should go in nearer and nearer to the land till she could discern men, women, and children, and their occupations.  A fisherman and his wife sat in the porch above their hanging garden, the woman knitting, the man mending his nets, barefooted boys and girls astride the keel of a boat below them.  The princess eyed them and wept.  ’They give me happiness; I can give them nothing,’ she said.

The margravine groaned impatiently at talk of such a dieaway sort.

My father sent a couple of men on shore with a gift of money to their family in the name of the Princess Ottilia.  How she thanked him for his prompt ideas!  ‘It is because you are generous you read one well.’

She had never thanked me.  I craved for that vibrating music as of her deep heart penetrated and thrilling, but shrank from grateful words which would have sounded payment.  Running before the wind swiftly on a night of phosphorescent sea, when the waves opened to white hollows with frayed white ridges, wreaths of hissing silver, her eyelids closed, and her hand wandered over the silken coverlet to the hammock cloth, and up, in a blind effort to touch.  Mine joined to it.  Little Aennchen was witness.  Ottilia held me softly till her slumber was deep.

CHAPTER XXVI

IN VIEW OF THE HOHENZOLLERN’S BIRTHPLACE

Our cruise came to an end in time to save the margravine from yawning.  The last day of it was windless, and we hung in sight of the colourless low Flemish coast for hours, my father tasking his ingenuity to amuse her.  He sang with Miss Sibley, rallied Mr. Peterborough, played picquet to lose, threw over the lead line to count the fathoms, and whistling for the breeze, said to me, ’We shall decidedly have to offer her an exhibition of tipsy British seamen as a final resource.  The case is grave either way; but we cannot allow the concluding impression to be a dull one.’

It struck me with astonishment to see the vigilant watch she kept over the princess this day, after having left her almost uninterruptedly to my care.

‘You are better?’ She addressed Ottilia.  ’You can sit up?  You think you can walk?  Then I have acted rightly, nay, judiciously,—­I have not made a sacrifice for nothing.  I took the cruise, mind you, on your account.  You would study yourself to the bone, till you looked like a canary’s quill, with that Herr Professor of yours.  Now I ’ve given you a dose of life.  Yes, you begin to look like human flesh.  Something has done you good.’