Her heart was bursting with love for Lorry; her mind was overflowing with tender thoughts that could not be sent to him, much as she trusted to the honor of Quinnox, her messenger.  Hour after hour she sat in her window and marveled at the change that had been wrought in her life by this strong American, her eyes fixed on the faraway monastery, her heart still and cold and fearful.  She had no confidant in this miserable affair of the heart.  Others, near and dear, had surmised, but no word of hers confirmed.  A diffidence, strange and proud, forbade the confession of her frailty, sweet, pure and womanly though it was.  She could not forget that she was a Princess.

The Countess Dagmar was piqued by her reticence and sought in manifold ways to draw forth the voluntary avowal, with its divine tears and blushes.  Harry Anguish, who spent much of his time at the castle and who invariably deserted his guards at the portals, was as eager as the Countess to have her commit herself irretrievably by word or sign, but he, too, was disappointed.  He was, also, considerably puzzled.  Her Highness’s manner was at all times frank and untroubled.  She was apparently light-hearted; her cheeks had lost none of their freshness; her eyes were bright; her smile was quick and merry; her wit unclouded.  Receptions, drawing-rooms and state functions found her always vivacious, so much so that her Court wondered not a little.  Daily reports brought no news of the fugitive, but while others were beginning to acquire the haggard air of worry and uncertainty, she was calmly resigned.  The fifteenth, the sixteenth, the seventeenth, the eighteenth and now the nineteenth of November came and still the Princess revealed no marked sign of distress.  Could they have seen her in the privacy of her chamber on those dreary, maddening nights they would not have known their sovereign.

Heavy-hearted and with bowed heads the people of Graustark saw the nineteenth fade in the night, the breaking of which would bring the crush of pride, the end of power.  At court there was the silent dread and the dying hope that relief might come at the last hour.  Men, with pale faces and tearful eyes, wandered through the ancient castle, speechless, nerveless, miserable.  Brave soldiers crept about, shorn of pride and filled with woe.  Citizens sat and stared aimlessly for hours, thinking of naught but the disaster so near at hand and so unavoidable.  The whole nation surged as if in the last throes of death.  To-morrow the potency of Graustark was to die, its domain was to be cleft in twain,—­disgraced before the world.