“Then within his distant castle, Home returned, he dreamed his days⁠— Silent, sad⁠—and when death took him He was mad, the legend says.”

When recalling all this afterwards the prince could not for the life of him understand how to reconcile the beautiful, sincere, pure nature of the girl with the irony of this jest. That it was a jest there was no doubt whatever; he knew that well enough, and had good reason, too, for his conviction; for during her recitation of the ballad Aglaya had deliberately changed the letters A.M.D. into N. P. B. He was quite sure she had not done this by accident, and that his ears had not deceived him. At all events her performance⁠—which was a joke, of course, if rather a crude one⁠—was premeditated. They had evidently talked (and laughed) over the “poor knight” for more than a month.