that is nonsense," gravely pronounced the elder, steeped for long years in all the traditions and conventionalities of Royalty. "Women in our position must be satisfied with the hope that love may come after marriage; or, if not, we must rest content in doing our duty in that state of life to which heaven has been pleased to call us!"
"Bother duty!" remarked Sylvia, with an impatient disregard for those elegancies of speech to which she had been so carefully brought up. "Thank goodness, nowadays not all the king's horses and all the king's men can make even a princess marry any one against her will. I hate the everlasting cant about duty in marriage. When people love each other they are kind and good and sweet and virtuous, because it is a pleasure, not because it's duty; and that's the only sort of loyalty worth having between man and woman, according to my ideas. I would not take anything less from a man; and I should despise him if he were ready to accept less from me."
"You are almost impious, Sylvia; you ought to have been born a bourgeoise," said her mother. But at this moment, when the clash of tongues, as opinion struck upon opinion, was imminent, there occurred a happy diversion in the arrival of a servant with letters.
Sylvia, who was a neglectful correspondent, had nothing; but two or three bulky envelopes had come for the Grand Duchess, and eagerly she broke the seal of one which bore the hand writing of her son Friedrich, now Crown Prince of Abruzzia.
"Open the others for me, dear, while I see what Fritz has to say," she requested. And Sylvia leisurely obeyed.
There was a note from an old friend of whom she was fond; and she had just begun to be interested in the first paragraph, when an ejaculation from her mother caused a quick lifting of her lashes.
The Grand Duchess was staring at the scrawled pages, held close to her near-sighted eyes, while a bright flush troubled the surface of her usually serene countenance.
"What is the matter?" exclaimed Sylvia. "Anything wrong with Fritz?"
"No – no – nothing in the least wrong," murmured the Grand Duchess absent-mindedly. "Far from it, indeed; but really – this is the most extraordinary coincidence. It seems almost too strange that it should come at such a moment. Yet I suppose I am not dreaming?" She peered questioningly at Sylvia; for it must be confessed that the Grand Duchess did sometimes sleep, perchance even dream, in the warm seclusion of the old riverside garden.
"Life is a dream!" hummed the Princess. "But you look awake, dear; and I've never known you to talk whole sentences in your sleep. What has Fritz been doing?"
"It is not Fritz; it's your emperor," returned her mother.
It was now Sylvia's turn to flush. This, then, was the "coincidence"! She wished, yet vaguely dreaded, to ask for the purport of the news. Of course it was ridiculous to blush, because it was ridiculous to care. But the fact remained that she did blush and that she did care.
Princess Sylvia had never seen Maximilian of Rhaetia; nevertheless, as she had half laughingly, half earnestly declared, he had been for her the one real man in a world of shadow men, since childish days. In the little room grandiloquently called her "study" (a room sacred to herself alone, whose secrets even her mother did not share) were preserved many souvenirs of the Emperor, which had been accumulating for years. There were paragraphs cut from newspapers, setting forth his great prowess as a soldier, hunter, and mountaineer, with dramatic anecdotes of his haughty courage when in danger. There were portraits of Maximilian, beginning from an early age, up to the present, when he was shown as a tall, stern-eyed, passionate-lipped, aggressive-chinned young man of thirty. There were copies of pictures he had painted, plays he had written, music he had composed, fierce and warlike speeches he had delivered; accounts of improvements in guns and gun powder invented by him; with numerous other records of his accomplishments and achievements; for the Emperor of Rhaetia was, in his own mind, and that of his people, the one shining exception to the rule that a "Jack of all trades can be master of none." He was master of all, or at least all he had ever attempted – their name being legion – and Sylvia loved him because it was so. The locked drawers of her desk were hallowed by the records of her hero which they hid.
Now, the thought that flashed into her mind was that Fritz's letter might perhaps contain a gossiping account of the Emperor's engagement to one of those other Royal girls, who, as the Grand Duchess had justly observed, were more suitable to match him than poor, pretty little Princess Sylvia of Eltzburg-Neuwald. Maximilian was thirty years old (Sylvia knew his age to the day, almost to the hour); therefore it was remarkable that he had not long ago listened to the advice of his Chancellor and chosen a wife worthy to be Empress of Rhaetia and the mother of an heir.
"Guess what Fritz writes of him," said the Grand Duchess, controlling visible emotion.
Sylvia also controlled hers, crushing it down with a relentless hand, and telling herself that what she felt was at its worst but wounded vanity.
"He's going to be married?" she quietly suggested.
"That depends." Her mother laughed nervously, with a stifled and mysterious delight. "Guess again – but no, I won't tease you. After this letter, coming as it has in the midst of our conversation, I shall be a firm believer in telepathy. It is too wonderful. He may be going to be married; he may not. For, my dear, dear child, he wants – to marry you."
Sylvia sprang to her feet. Perhaps such exhibition of feeling on the part of a Royal maiden decorously sued (by proxy) for her hand, was hardly correct. But Sylvia thought of no such considerations. She did not even know that she had left her chair. For a moment a delicate blue haze floated between her eyes and the Grand Duchess's pleased, plump face.
"He – wants – to – marry – me?" she echoed dazedly.
"Yes, you, my darling. Providence must have drawn your inclination toward him. It is really a romance. Some day, no doubt, it will be told to the world in history."
Sylvia did not hear. She stood quite still, her hands clasped before her, the letter she had been reading on the grass at her feet.
"Did he – the Emperor – tell this to Fritz and ask him to write to you?" she questioned.
"Not – not exactly that, dear," admitted the Grand Duchess, her face changing; for Sylvia was so exacting and held such peculiar ideas, that it was sometimes rather difficult to know how she would receive the most ordinary announcements.
The rapt expression faded from Sylvia's features, like the passing of dawn.
"Not – exactly that?" she repeated. "Then what – how?"
"Perhaps – though it is not strictly the correct thing – you had better read Fritz's letter?"
Sylvia put her hands behind her back with a childlike gesture. "I – somehow I don't want to. Please tell me," she said simply.
"Well, then, you know what an admiration Fritz has felt for Count von Markstein, the Rhaetian Chancellor, ever since the visit the Chancellor paid to Abruzzia? They have kept up a correspondence from time to time, and the sort of friendship which often exists between an old man with a great career behind him and a young man with his still to come. Now it seems (in the quite informal manner by which such affairs are generally begun) that Count von Markstein has written confidentially to Fritz, as our only near male relative, to ask how we would regard an alliance between you and Maximilian, or if we have already disposed of your hand. The Emperor is inclined to listen to advice at last; and you, as a Protestant Princess – "
"Yes, a Protestant Princess more than ever, for I protest against being approached upon such terms!" Sylvia exclaimed.
The
