“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 had been that, and had selected her to help him reign over the Hereditary Grand Duchy of Baumenburg-Drippe, not only because her father was an English Duke with Royal Stuart blood in his veins, but because her Virginian mother had brought much gold to the Northmoreland exchequer. Afterwards, he had freely spent such portion of that gold as had come to his coffers, in trying to keep his little estates intact; but now it was all gone, and long ago he had died of grief and bitter disappointment; the Hereditary Grand Duchy of Baumenburg-Drippe was ruled by a cousinly understudy of the German Emperor William the Second; the one son of the marriage had been adopted, as heir to his crown, by the childless King of Hungaria; the handsome and lamentably extravagant old Duke of Northmoreland was dead; his title and vast estates had passed to a distant and disagreeable relative; and the widowed Grand Duchess, with her one fair daughter, had lived for years in a pretty old house with a high-walled garden, at Hampton Court, lent by the generosity of the King and Queen of England.
For a long moment the Dresden china lady thought in silence and something of sadness. Then she roused herself again and asked the one and only Royal Princess with an American name what, in the way of a match, she really expected.
“What do I expect?” echoed Virginia. “Why, I wish for the Moon—no, I mean the Sun. But I don’t expect to get it.”
“Is that a way of saying you never intend to marry?”