The Adventure of Princess Sylvia

								

the Grand Duchess, who, on principle, had so often objected to
Sylvia's unconventionalities that the attitude of objection had become
chronic. "Your father is dead. The Grand Duchy of Eltzburg-Neuwald has
been absorbed by Prussia--for a price, it is true; but it is your
brother who has had most of the benefit of that price. And though my
dear husband was second cousin to the Emperor of Germany, who loved
him during his life as an elder brother, and though you are strictly
within the pale from which Maximilian is entitled to select a wife,
one must admit that there are other girls who, from a worldly point of
view, might be considered more suitable."
"I wasn't thinking of the worldly point of view," said the
incorrigible one, with unusual softness. She could be gentle and
tender enough in certain moods; but she was used to taking the lead
with her mother.
"People--men or women--with Royal blood in their veins must think of
that point of view," returned the Grand Duchess. She was not Royal,
save by marriage, though her long since dead father, the English Duke
of Northminster, claimed ancestry from kings and had married a near
relation of Queen Victoria. But he had been one of the richest men in
the world at the time of his daughter's marriage; and the exchequer of
Eltzburg-Neuwald had sadly needed replenishing. It, or rather its
representative, had finally swallowed a large part of the Duke of
Northminster's private fortune, the enormous remainder having vanished
in a great financial panic; so that just before the Hereditary Grand
Duke of Eltzburg-Neuwald had been gathered to his fathers, he had been
induced to make terms with his cousin, the then reigning German
Emperor, for the Grand Duchy. Thus deprived of his inheritance, the
only son, Friedrich, had joyfully accepted an offer of adoption as
Crown Prince from the childless old King of Abruzzia.
The widowed Grand Duchess, not loving the thought of a German
residence, when bereft of her ancient importance; hating her son's
adopted land of Abruzzia, which she considered "half savage" (yet
liking still less the alternative of a wandering life on the
Continent, or a home with the uncle who had inherited her father's
title and estates), had gratefully caught at Queen Victoria's
kindness. Ever since Sylvia Victoria Alexandra Mary Valerie
Hildegarde, her daughter, had been a proud little Princess of ten
years old, the two had lived in the ancient, rose-and-ivy-embowered
house placed at their disposal by Her Gracious Majesty. Sylvia had
been educated in England; all her thoughts and ideas were those of an
English girl, and a somewhat "advanced" English girl. Her very beauty
was more English than German--the delicately chiselled nose, the
short, haughty upper lip, the frank imperiousness of the hazel eyes
under the black sweep of lashes, and dark, soft curve of brow. She was
twenty-one now, and vastly tired of being Royal, for already her high