away, but the people stood watching it until it was out of sight.

"That's the sweetest child in all England," said one woman, wiping her eyes with the corner of her apron, "and now the poor little thing will have no father."

"Did ever you see a man so fond of his child as the Duke?" said another with a sob.

"King George had nine sons," said a man who stood near, "and the Duke was every whit the best of them. The King never treated him fairly. When the others wanted money, they had it; but when the Duke needed it, his father just said, 'Get along as you can.' There wasn't one of the sons that the King wasn't kinder to than to the Duke."

"He'll have little more chance to be kind or unkind," declared another. "Have you not heard the news from London? The King is very ill, and the Prince Regent will soon be George IV."

"It's bad luck speaking ill of him that's to be king," said one, "but the man that's gone to London in his coffin was the man that I'd have liked to see on the throne."

"Will the Duchess go back to her own land, think you?" questioned the first woman.

"Yes, that she will," replied the second positively "There never was a woman that loved her own people better than she. Folks say she writes her mother every day of her life."

"I say she'll not go back," declared one of the men with equal positiveness. "She'll do her duty, and her duty is to care for the Princess. God bless her, and make her our queen some day."

So the people in the village talked, and so people were talking throughout the kingdom. After the first sad days were past the question had to be decided by the Duchess and her devoted brother Leopold. The Duchess loved her family and her old home at Amorbach, near Heidelberg. There she and the Duke had spent the first months of their married life, and nothing would have helped her more to bear her loneliness than a return to the Bavarian Palace, in which every room was associated with memories of him. She was a stranger in England and she could not even speak the language of the country. The Duke's sisters loved her, and Adelaide, who had been a German princess before she became the wife of the Duke of Clarence gave her the warmest sympathy in this time of sorrow; but the Regent disliked her and had always seemed indignant at the possibility that his brother's child would inherit the throne. The Regent had now become king, for his father had died on the very day of the Duchess's return to London. Unless a child was born to either the Duke of York or the Duke of Clarence the baby Princess would become queen at their death. The child who would rule England ought to be brought up in England.

There was something else to be considered, however. When the Duchess was only a girl of seventeen she had become the wife of the Prince of Leiningen, and at his death he had made her sole guardian of their two children, Charles and Féodore. As soon as Charles was old enough he would succeed his father as ruler of Leiningen but until then his mother was Regent.

"Is it right for me to neglect my duties in Bavaria?" questioned the Duchess; "to give up the regency of Leiningen? Shall I neglect Charles to care for Drina's interest?"

"Charles will be well cared for," said Prince Leopold. "His people love him already and will be true to him. England is a great kingdom. It is not an easy land to rule. A queen who has grown up in another country will never hold the hearts of the people."

"True," said the Duchess. "I must live in England. That is my duty to my child and to her country."

How the Duchess and her child were to live was a question of much importance. The King could not refuse to allow them to occupy their old apartments in Kensington Palace, but the Duchess was almost penniless. Nearly all the money which her first husband had left her she had been obliged to give up on her second marriage and she had surrendered all the Duke's property to his creditors to go as far as it would in paying his debts. Some money had been settled upon her when she married the Duke, but that was so tied up that it would be many months before she could touch it. The only plea that she could make to the King would be on the ground that her child might become his heir, and nothing would have enraged him so much as to suggest such a thing. Whatever Parliament might appropriate to the Princess would be given against the wishes of the King, and there would, at any rate, be a long delay. It was a strange condition of affairs. The child would probably have millions at her command before many years had passed, but for the present there was no money even to pay the wages of the servants for their care of her.

Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Kent and Princess Victoria.
(From painting by Sir W. Beechey, R.A.)

If this story had been a fairy tale, the fairy godmother with the magic wand would have been called upon to shower golden guineas into the empty purse, but in this case it was the good uncle who came to the aid of his Princess niece. When Prince Leopold married the Princess Charlotte he went to England to live, for he expected that some day his wife would become Queen of Great Britain. After her death he made his home in England, but spent much of his time in travelling. He was not rich, but he was glad to help his sister as much as possible, and after the death of the Duke of Kent he made her and her children his first care.

It was decided, then, that the Duchess would remain in England, and that Kensington Palace should become the home of the Princess Alexandrina Victoria. This was a large, comfortable-looking abode. It had been a favorite home of several of the English sovereigns. About it were gardens cut into beds shaped like scrolls, palm leaves, ovals, circles, and all sorts of conventional figures so prim and stiff that one might well have wondered how flowers ever dared to grow in any shape but rectangular. The yew trees were trimmed into peacocks and lions and other kinds of birds and beasts. All this was interesting only as a curiosity, but there was a pretty pond and there were long, beautiful avenues of trees. There were flowers and shrubs and soft green turf. It was out of the fog and smoke of the city; indeed it was so far out that there was danger of robbers to the man who ventured to walk or drive at night through the unlighted roads. For many years after the birth of the Princess a bell was rung Sunday evenings so that all Londoners might meet and guard against danger by going over the lonely way to their homes in one large company.

The life at Kensington was very quiet. No one would have guessed from seeing the royal baby that the fate which lay before her was different from that to be expected for any other child who was not the daughter of a Prince. She spent much of the time out of doors, at first in the arms of her nurse, then in a tiny carriage, in which her half-sister, the Princess Féodore, liked to draw her about. "She must learn never to be afraid of people," declared the wise mother, and before the child could speak plainly she was taught to make a little bow when strangers came near her carriage and say, "Morning, lady," or "Morning, sir."

The little girl was happy, but life was hard for the mother. She had given up her home and her friends, and now she had to give up even her own language, for English and not German must be her child's mother tongue, and she set to work bravely to conquer the mysteries of English Her greatest comfort in her loneliness was the company of the Duchess Adelaide, wife of the Duke of Clarence. For many weeks after the death of the Duke of Kent, the Duchess drove to Kensington every day to spend some time with her sister-in-law. When the Princess was about a year and a half old, a little daughter was born to the