The Frances Hodgson Burnett MEGAPACK ®. Frances Hodgson Burnett

always that your mother died of her bitter fears for me and the unending strain of them. She was very young and loving, and knew that there was no day when we parted that we were sure of seeing each other alive again. When she died, she begged me to promise that your boyhood and youth should not be burdened by the knowledge she had found it so terrible to bear. I should have kept the secret from you, even if she had not so implored me. I had never meant that you should know the truth until you were a man. If I had died, a certain document would have been sent to you which would have left my task in your hands and made my plans clear. You would have known then that you also were a Prince Ivor, who must take up his country’s burden and be ready when Samavia called. I tried to help you to train yourself for any task. You never failed me.”

      “Your Majesty,” said The Rat, “I began to work it out, and think it must be true that night when we were with the old woman on the top of the mountain. It was the way she looked at—at His Highness.”

      “Say ‘Marco,’” threw in Prince Ivor. “It’s easier. He was my army, Father.”

      Stefan Loristan’s grave eyes melted.

      “Say ‘Marco,’” he said. “You were his army—and more—when we both needed one. It was you who invented the Game!”

      “Thanks, Your Majesty,” said The Rat, reddening scarlet. “You do me great honor! But he would never let me wait on him when we were traveling. He said we were nothing but two boys. I suppose that’s why it’s hard to remember, at first. But my mind went on working until sometimes I was afraid I might let something out at the wrong time. When we went down into the cavern, and I saw the Forgers of the Sword go mad over him—I knew it must be true. But I didn’t dare to speak. I knew you meant us to wait; so I waited.”

      “You are a faithful friend,” said the King, “and you have always obeyed orders!”

      A great moon was sailing in the sky that night—just such a moon as had sailed among the torn rifts of storm clouds when the Prince at Vienna had come out upon the balcony and the boyish voice had startled him from the darkness of the garden below. The clearer light of this night’s splendor drew them out on a balcony also—a broad balcony of white marble which looked like snow. The pure radiance fell upon all they saw spread before them—the lovely but half-ruined city, the great palace square with its broken statues and arches, the splendid ghost of the unroofed cathedral whose High Altar was bare to the sky.

      They stood and looked at it. There was a stillness in which all the world might have ceased breathing.

      “What next?” said Prince Ivor, at last speaking quietly and low. “What next, Father?”

      “Great things which will come, one by one,” said the King, “if we hold ourselves ready.”

      Prince Ivor turned his face from the lovely, white, broken city, and put his brown hand on his father’s arm.

      “Upon the ledge that night—” he said, “Father, you remember—?” The King was looking far away, but he bent his head:

      “Yes. That will come, too,” he said. “Can you repeat it?”

      “Yes,” said Ivor, “and so can the aide-de-camp. We’ve said it a hundred times. We believe it’s true. ‘If the descendant of the Lost Prince is brought back to rule in Samavia, he will teach his people the Law of the One, from his throne. He will teach his son, and that son will teach his son, and he will teach his. And through such as these, the whole world will learn the Order and the Law.’”

      A LADY OF QUALITY (Part 1)

      Being a most curious, hitherto unknown history, as related by Mr. Isaac Bickerstaff but not presented to the World of Fashion through the pages of The Tatler, and now for the first time written down by Francis Hodgson Burnett

      Were Nature just to Man from his first hour, he need not ask for Mercy; then ’tis for us—the toys of Nature—to be both just and merciful, for so only can the wrongs she does be undone.

      CHAPTER I

      The twenty-fourth day of November 1690

      On a wintry morning at the close of 1690, the sun shining faint and red through a light fog, there was a great noise of baying dogs, loud voices, and trampling of horses in the courtyard at Wildairs Hall; Sir Jeoffry being about to go forth a-hunting, and being a man with a choleric temper and big, loud voice, and given to oaths and noise even when in good-humour, his riding forth with his friends at any time was attended with boisterous commotion. This morning it was more so than usual, for he had guests with him who had come to his house the day before, and had supped late and drunk deeply, whereby the day found them, some with headaches, some with a nausea at their stomachs, and some only in an evil humour which made them curse at their horses when they were restless, and break into loud surly laughs when a coarse joke was made. There were many such jokes, Sir Jeoffry and his boon companions being renowned throughout the county for the freedom of their conversation as for the scandal of their pastimes, and this day ’twas well indeed, as their loud-voiced, oath-besprinkled jests rang out on the cold air, that there were no ladies about to ride forth with them.

      ’Twas Sir Jeoffry who was louder than any other, he having drunk even deeper than the rest, and though ’twas his boast that he could carry a bottle more than any man, and see all his guests under the table, his last night’s bout had left him in ill-humour and boisterous. He strode about, casting oaths at the dogs and rating the servants, and when he mounted his big black horse ’twas amid such a clamour of voices and baying hounds that the place was like Pandemonium.

      He was a large man of florid good looks, black eyes, and full habit of body, and had been much renowned in his youth for his great strength, which was indeed almost that of a giant, and for his deeds of prowess in the saddle and at the table when the bottle went round. There were many evil stories of his roysterings, but it was not his way to think of them as evil, but rather to his credit as a man of the world, for, when he heard that they were gossiped about, he greeted the information with a loud triumphant laugh. He had married, when she was fifteen, the blooming toast of the county, for whom his passion had long died out, having indeed departed with the honeymoon, which had been of the briefest, and afterwards he having borne her a grudge for what he chose to consider her undutiful conduct. This grudge was founded on the fact that, though she had presented him each year since their marriage with a child, after nine years had passed none had yet been sons, and, as he was bitterly at odds with his next of kin, he considered each of his offspring an ill turn done him.

      He spent but little time in her society, for she was a poor, gentle creature of no spirit, who found little happiness in her lot, since her lord treated her with scant civility, and her children one after another sickened and died in their infancy until but two were left. He scarce remembered her existence when he did not see her face, and he was certainly not thinking of her this morning, having other things in view, and yet it so fell out that, while a groom was shortening a stirrup and being sworn at for his awkwardness, he by accident cast his eye upward to a chamber window peering out of the thick ivy on the stone. Doing so he saw an old woman draw back the curtain and look down upon him as if searching for him with a purpose.

      He uttered an exclamation of anger.

      “Damnation! Mother Posset again,” he said. “What does she there, old frump?”

      The curtain fell and the woman disappeared, but in a few minutes more an unheard-of thing happened—among the servants in the hall, the same old woman appeared making her way with a hurried fretfulness, and she descended haltingly the stone steps and came to his side where he sat on his black horse.

      “The Devil!” he exclaimed—“what are you here for? ’Tis not time for another wench upstairs, surely?”

      “’Tis not time,” answered the old nurse acidly, taking her tone from his own. “But there is one, but an hour old, and my lady—”

      “Be damned to her!” quoth Sir Jeoffry savagely. “A ninth one—and ’tis nine too many. ’Tis more than man can bear. She does it but to spite me.”

      “’Tis