"Call him a match, if you like; he's certainly a stick. Anyway, he's not a match for me. There's only one existing." And the Princess's eyes were lifted to the heavens, as if the being at whom she hinted were placed high as the sun that shone above her.
The Grand Duchess was not herself "Hereditary." Her dear lord and master had been that, which was perhaps the reason why such 4 stateliness as she had was almost all acquired. She dropped it sometimes, when alone with her unmarried, unmanageable young daughter; and to-day (in the sweet, old-fashioned garden of the house at Richmond, lent by Queen Victoria) was one of these occasions. The Grand Duchess pouted, and looked like a plump, sulky, elderly child, as she inquired what the Princess Sylvia expected in the way of a matrimonial prize.
"What do I expect?" echoed the young lady. "I expect an emperor. In fact, the Emperor." For a few moments the Grand Duchess of Eltzburg- Neuwald remained dumb. Then she inadequately murmured, "Dear me!" Yet her demeanour did not suggest a stricken mind. She merely looked surprised, with an added expression that might signify a slow mental readjustment.
"It is really not entirely impossible," she commented at last. "But—the Emperor of Rhaetia is a very great man."
"He is the only man," returned the Princess calmly. "He always has been. He is, and ever will be. He is the Napoleon of his generation, 5 without Napoleon's meanness or brutality. Although he's not an Englishman, even you admit his virtues."
"Don't speak as if I were bristling with English prejudices," scolded the Grand Duchess. "I ceased to be English when I married your father. But why did you never mention this—er—desire of yours before?"
"I am far too maidenly," responded Sylvia, "to give my feeling any such bold name. I have not ceased to be English, if my mother has. Indeed, I give my feeling no name at all. I haven't spoken of it if there be an 'it' to speak of—before, simply because really I'm not crying for a particular toy to play with. I'm only saying, if I can't have that, I won't have another toy a poor, unworthy toy."
"You call Prince Henri d'Ortens a 'poor, unworthy toy?'"
"Compared with the Emperor of Rhaetia and compared with me. Look at me, mother. Would I not make an empress?"
Sylvia laughed, sprang up from the seat that girdled the great trunk 6 of the Lebanon cedar, and stood with her bright head erect, her lips still smiling.