But he could reasonably find no fault with her, save the fault of being
faultless. She was a perfect hostess, and fulfilled all the duties of
her exalted position with admirable tact and foresight,--she was ever
busy in the performance of good and charitable deeds,--she was an
excellent mother, and took the utmost personal care that her sons
should be healthily nurtured and well brought up,--she never interfered
in any matter of state or ceremony,--she simply seemed to move as a
star moves, shining over the earth but having no part in it.
Irresponsive as she was, she nevertheless compelled admiration,--her
husband himself admired her, but only as he would have admired a statue
or a painting. For his was an impulsive and generous nature, and his
marriage had kept his heart empty of the warmth of love, and his home
devoid of the light of sympathy. Even his children had been born more
as the sons of the nation than his own,--he was not conscious of any
very great affection for them, or interest in their lives. And he had
sought to kindle at many strange fires the heavenly love-beacon which
should have flamed its living glory into his days; so it had naturally
chanced that he had spent by far the larger portion of his time on the
persuasion of mere Whim,--and as vastly inferior women to his wife had
made him spend it.

But at this particular juncture, when the curtain is drawn up on
certain scenes and incidents in his life-drama, a change had been
effected in his opinions and surroundings. For eighteen years after his
marriage, he had lived on the first step of the Throne as its next
heir; and when he passed that step and ascended the Throne itself, he
seemed to have crossed a vast abyss of distance between the Old and the
New. Behind him the Past rolled away like a cloud vanishing, to be seen
no more,--before him arose the dim vista of wavering and uncertain
shadows, which no matter how they shifted and changed,--no matter how