The Grand Duchess grew paler than before. She had been vaguely distressed. Now, she was sharply alarmed. If Virginia admitted that this great adventure should never have been undertaken, then indeed the earth must be quaking under their feet.
“Ought not—to have come?” she repeated, piteously. “What dreadful thing has happened?”
The Princess stood with bent head. “It’s hard to tell,” she said, “harder, almost, than anything I ever had to do. But it must be done. Everything’s at an end, dear.”
“What—you’ve told him, and he has refused to forgive?”
“He knows nothing.”
“For Heaven’s sake, don’t keep me in suspense.”
Virginia’s lips were dry. “He asked me to be his wife,” she said. “Oh, wait—wait! Don’t look happy. You don’t understand, and I didn’t, at first. He had to explain and—he put the thing as little offensively as he could. Oh, Mother, he thinks me only good enough to be his morganatic wife!”
The storm had burst at last, and the Princess fell on her knees by the sofa where, burying her face in her mother’s lap, she sobbed as if parting with her youth.
There had always been mental and temperamental barriers between the Dresden china lady and her daughter; but they loved each other, and never had the girl been so dear to her mother as now. The Grand Duchess thought of the summer day when Virginia had knelt beside her, saying, “We are going to have an adventure, you and I.”