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at the last faint remains of the burnt incense.
    The candles were hardly used and she snap-lighted them—all four—to lean forward a little to study her reflection in the wide mirror. Her hair was still night braided, but its dull brown shade was certainly not her best feature. She envied Zuta those sleek black strands that looked like lengths of satin. But—she was not too plain! For the first time Mahart allowed herself to believe that.
    There were a number of powders and creams available. She knew that Zuta was zealous in using such, but she had hesitated to try, thinking always of the tittering of maids who always discussed the actions of their mistresses behind their backs, or even arousing amusement in Zuta, who would be entirely too kind to tell her the truth. What would she do without Zuta!

    It seemed to Mahart that her companion lady was born knowing what Mahart had to learn. She could always say the right thing, do the gracious act, and had been quick when Mahart was younger to cover any awkwardness her mistress might cause. Though sometimes—sometimes Mahart wished that she still had Nurse.
    Nurse had known and served her mother and had been her refuge in childhood whenever her father's impatient avoidance had hurt. But Nurse was of childhood, too, gone away with a generous pension to take care of her daughter's family back in Bresta. Then Zuta had come, dazzling with her sophistication, though she was only three years older. She was an orphan of the plague but of high rank, and seemed well satisfied with her present lot.
    It had been Zuta who had told her of Halwice, the Herbmistress. Though she was so close kept in this shell, Mahart sighed and wished away all the fantastical carved furniture and comfort around her; perhaps it might be possible sometime to actually meet this purveyor of dreams and mistress of fragrance.
    Only—she was tired—tired—tired— Her mouth drooped at the corners and the growing depression of the last few months gripped her again. She was tired of her life, feeling stifled at times. If it were not that she had in the past discovered the great library what would she have known at all of the world around her—outside that shell her father had forged?
    Page by page she had traveled to far countries, confronted strange beasts and stranger peoples—and learned of Kronen of the past and the part her family had played in it. She believed that her father never entered the library; she was very certain that the Lady Saylana did not, though from time to time one of her serving people had come to search out a book, always on the shelves of the oldest ones where the leather backs left dust of decay upon the hands of would-be readers.
    There was her daily walk, of course, but it was strictlyconfined to the pocket-sized garden from which even the gardeners were warned away during that time. And her meals were in the stately, hollow magnificence of that dining room, where her father ate in hasty gulps, sometimes with Vazul, neither of them paying any attention to her.
    She encouraged Zuta to mingle with the other ladies of the court. The gossip she brought back was always enlightening. But, of course, there was no mingling of her own with Saylana's chosen servants. Though that assembly had shrunk in size since the death of the late Duke, his daughter still had her adherents and visitors.
    Mahart had seen Barbric, her son, from a distance and had not been greatly impressed. His shambling walk and foolish high laugh were certainly not that of a prospective Duke who would do justice to Kronen, but then—what of her father?
    At each meal he sat beneath the state portrait of her distant cousin and the difference grew more apparent every time she had viewed the two in such contrast.
    The mighty presence of the former Duke was certainly enough to overshadow most of the men she had seen. Captain Rangle of the Guard would come the closest to the firm jaw, that high-held head, that warrior's stance.