“I’m afraid it amounts to that,” admitted Virginia, “since there is only one man in the world I would have for my husband.”
“My dearest! A man you have let yourself learn to care for? A man beneath you? How terrible! But you see no one. I—”
“I’ve never seen this man. And—I’m not ‘in love’ with him; that would be too foolish. Because, instead of being beneath, he’s far, far above me.”
“Virginia! Of whom can you be talking? Or is this another joke?”
Virginia blushed a little, and instead of answering her mother’s look of helpless appeal, stared at the row of tall hollyhocks that blazed along the ivy-hidden garden wall. She did not speak for an instant, and then she said with the dainty shyness of a child pinned to a statement by uncomprehending elders, “It isn’t a joke. Nonsense, maybe—yet not a joke. I’ve always thought of him—for so many years I’ve forgotten when it first began. He’s so great, so—everything that appeals to me; how could I help thinking about him, and putting him on a pedestal? I—there’s no idea of marriage in my mind, of course. Only—there’s no other man possible, after all the thoughts I’ve given him. No other man in the world.”
“My dear, you must tell me his name.”
“What, when I’ve described him—almost—do you still need to hear his name? Well then, I—I’m not ashamed to tell. It’s ‘Leopold.’”
“Leopold! You’re talking of the Emperor of Rhaetia.”
“As if it could have been any one else.”