The Princess Virginia

								

show you--"
"Or to shock me. You are so like your grandmother."
"That's the best compliment any one can give me, which is lucky, as
it's given so often," laughed the Princess. "Dear, adorable Virginia!"
She cuddled into the pink hollow of her hand the pearl-framed ivory
miniature of a beautiful, smiling girl, which always hung from a thin
gold chain around her neck. "They shouldn't have named me after you,
should they, if they hadn't wanted me to be like you?"
"It was partly a question of money, dear," sighed the Grand Duchess.
"If my mother hadn't left a legacy to my first daughter only on
consideration that her own extremely American name of Virginia should
be perpetuated--"
"It was a delicious way of being patriotic. I'm glad she did it. I
love being the only Royal Princess with American blood in my veins and
an American name on my handkerchiefs. Do you believe for an instant
that if Grandmother Virginia were alive, she would let Granddaughter
Virginia marry Prince Henri de Touraine?"
"I don't see why not," said the Grand Duchess. "She wasn't too
patriotic to marry an English Duke, and startle London as the first
American Duchess. Heavens, the things she used to do, if one could
believe half the wild stories my father's sister told me in warning!
And as for my father, though a most charming man, of course, he
could not--er--have been called precisely estimable, while Prince
Henri certainly is, and an exceedingly good match even for you--in
present circumstances."
"Call him a match, if you like, Mother. He's undoubtedly a stick. But
no, he's not a match for me. There's only one on earth." And
Virginia's eyes were lifted to the sky as if, instead of existing on
earth, the person in her thoughts were placed as high as the sun that
shone above her.
"I should have preferred an Englishman--for you," said the Grand
Duchess, "if only there were one of suitable rank, free to--"
"I'm not thinking of an Englishman," murmured her daughter.
"If only you would think of poor Henri!"
"Never of him. You know I said I would be d--"
"Don't repeat it! Oh, when you look at me in that way, how like you
are to your grandmother's portrait at home--the one in white, painted
just before her marriage. One might have known you would be
extraordinary. That sort of thing invariably skips over a generation."
The Grand Duchess laid down the theory as a law; and whether or no she
were right, it was at least sure that she had inherited nothing of the
first Virginia's daring originality. Some of her radiant mother's
beauty, perhaps, watered down to gentle prettiness, for the Hereditary
Grand Duchess of Baumenburg-Drippe at fifty-one was still a
daintily-attractive woman, a middle-aged Dresden china lady, with a
perfect complexion, preserved by an almost perfect temper; surprised
eyebrows, kindly dimples, and a conventional upper lip.
She was not by birth "Hereditary." Her lord and (very much) her master