The Princess Passes

The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Princess Passes, by Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

THE DEAR PRINCESS
WHO, EACH YEAR, MAKES THE RIVIERA SUNNIER FOR HER PRESENCE
THE PRINCESS PASSES
CHAPTER I
Away, away, from men and towns, To the wild wood and the downs, To the silent wilderness. —Percy Bysshe Shelley.
To your happiness, I said, lifting my glass, and looking the girl in the eyes. She had the grace to blush, which was the least that she could do, for a moment ago she had jilted me.
The way of it was this.
I had met her and her mother the winter before at Davos, where I had been sent after South Africa, and a spell of playing fast and loose with my health—a possession usually treated as we treat the poor, whom we expect to have always with us. Helen Blantock had been the success of her season in London, had paid for her triumphs with a breakdown, and we had stopped at the same hotel.
The girl's reputation as a beauty had marched before her, blowing trumpets. She was the prettiest girl in Davos, as she had been the prettiest in London; and I shared with other normal, self-respecting men the amiable weakness of wishing to monopolise the woman most wanted by others. During the process I fell in love, and Helen was kind.
Lady Blantock, a matron of comfortable rotundity of figure and a placid way of folding plump, white hands, had, however, a contradictorily cold and watchful eye, which I had feared at first; but it had softened for me, and I accepted the omen. In the spring, when my London tyrant had pronounced me sound as a bell, I had proposed to Helen. The girl said neither yes nor no, but she had eyes and a smile which needed no translation, so I kissed her (it was in a conservatory at a dance) and was happy—for a fortnight.