You common people of the skies——
What are you when the moon shall rise?"
THE first and second dressing-gongs had sounded at Schloss Lynarberg on the evening of the day after Otto's visit to his brother, and the Grand Duchess was beginning to wonder what detained her daughter, when ringed fingers tapped smartly at the door. "Come in!" she answered the familiar sound, and Sylvia appeared on the threshold, still in the tennis dress she had worn that afternoon. She stood for an instant without speaking, her face so radiantly beautiful that it seemed illumined by a light from within.
It had been on the tip of her mother's tongue to scold the girl for her delay, since to be late was an almost unpardonable offense, with 153 Royalty in the house. But the words died, and others of a different sort came trooping to their place.
"Sylvia, what is it? You look—I hardly know how you look! But something has happened."
The Princess came slowly across the room, smiling with the air of one who walks in sleep. She hardly appeared to see the chair she took, but sat down as if by instinct, then rested her elbows on her knees, her chin nestling between her palms, like a pinky-white rose in its calyx.
"You may go, Josephine," said the Grand Duchess to her maid. "I will ring when I want you again."
The elaborate process of dressing her luxuriant gray hair had just been finished. The rest might wait until curiosity was satisfied.
But Sylvia sat still, dreaming. The Grand Duchess had to speak twice in a raised tone before she could command attention. "My child—have you anything to tell me?"
Sylvia roused herself. "Nothing, mother, Really—except that I am the 154 happiest girl on earth."