“You do love me, don’t you, dearest?” cooed the Princess, softly as a dove.
“You know I do, my child, though I don’t pretend to understand you,” sighed the Grand Duchess, well aware that she was about to be coaxed into some scheme, feeling that she would yield, and praying Providence that the yielding might not lead her into tribulation.
“People grow dull if we understand them too well,” said Virginia. “It’s like solving a puzzle. There’s no more fun in it, when it’s finished. But you wish me to be happy, darling?”
“More than I wish for anything else, excepting of course dear Dal’s—”
“Dal is a man and can take care of himself. I must do the best I can—poor me! And there’s something I want so much, so much, it would be heaven on earth, all my own, if I could win it. Leopold’s love, quite for myself, as a girl, not as a ‘suitable Protestant Princess.’ For a few horrid minutes, I thought it was too late to hope for that, and I must give him up, because I never could be sure if I accepted him without his love, and he said it had come afterwards, that it was really, really true. Anyway, it could never be the same; and I was miserable over what might have been. Then, suddenly, I saw how it still might be. I almost think I may be able to win his love, if you’ll promise to help me, dear.”
“Of course I will,” said the Grand Duchess, carried out of her pretty little, conventional self into unwonted impulsiveness, by the warmth of kisses soft and sweet as the roses on Virginia’s bosom.
“That is, I will if I can. But I don’t at all see what I can do.”
“I see. And what I want you to do, is to please, please see with my eyes.”
“They’re very bright ones,” smiled her mother.
Princess Virginia clasped the Grand Duchess round the waist so tightly that it hurt. Then she laughed, an odd, half-frightened, excited laugh. “Dearest, something perfectly wonderful is going to happen to you and me,” she said. “The most wonderful thing that ever has happened. We are going to have a—great—adventure. And what the end of it will be—I don’t know.”