"How came you to take the name Yolanda?" I asked.
"Grandfather wished to give me the name in baptism," she answered, "but Mary fell to my lot. I like the present arrangement. Mary is the name of the princess--the unhappy, faulty princess. Yolanda is my name. Almost every happy hour I have ever spent has been as Yolanda. You cannot know the wide difference between me and the Princess Mary. It is, Sir Karl, as if we were two persons."
She spoke very earnestly, and I could see that there was no mirth in her heart when she thought of herself as the Princess Mary; she was not jesting.
"I don't know the princess," I said laughingly, "but I know Yolanda."
"Yes; I'll tell you a great secret, Sir Karl. The Princess Mary is not at all an agreeable person. She is morose, revengeful, haughty, cold--" here her voice dropped to a whisper, "and, Sir Karl, she lies--she lies. While Yolanda--well, Yolanda at least is not cold, and I--I think she is a very delightful person. Don't you?"
There was a troubled, eager expression in her eyes that told plainly she was in earnest. To Yolanda the princess was another person.
"Yolanda is very sure of me," I answered.
"Ah, that she is," answered the girl. You see, this was a real case of billing and cooing between December and May.
A short silence followed, during which Yolanda glanced furtively toward Max and Twonette.
"You spoke of your grandfather," said I, "and that reminds me that you promised to tell me the story of the staircase in the wall."