Chapter 52

I came home with a different state of mind than I had left it in and was charmed to find old Margaret waiting for me and after supper, when I was alone for some time with father and daughter, I opened up the subject, though with great hesitation:

"Would it not be good to take every possible precaution, in case the Queen should not wish us what we do, as to what might happen before the experiment; and on or after her awakening, if she went out?"

Margaret's answer came so quickly that I was convinced it must have been ready for someone:

"But she agrees, and surely it cannot be otherwise. The father does with all his energy and all his great courage, exactly what the great Queen has arranged."

'But it could hardly be,' replied I, and all I had arranged was in a tomb high in a rock, in a desert solitude, cut off from the world by all possible means, and it seems that she relied on this solitude for insurance against accidents ce