"My eyes first saw the light," she began, "in a castle among the mountains around Valoro, one of the seats of my father, the king!"
Though I started at her words, they did not amaze me; I was prepared for them.
"My mother died when I was ten," she continued. "How I remember her with her fair curls and blue eyes, they seemed so strange among the dark-skinned Aquazilians! Young though I was, the shock of her death was the most awful, I think, that I ever had, perhaps—save one. It was all the greater because I had no brother or sister to share my grief with me. Yet I loved my father very dearly; he was a good and great man, and much reverenced by his people. There was no talk of revolutions nor republics in those days; the people were content under a mild rule.
"The years went on, and I became a woman, nurtured in the magnificence of a rich palace, yet imbued with the fear of God, for my father was a good man, and had me well taught my faith. I grew up, I think, with the brightness of my dead mother's spirit pervading me, for I avoided many of the pitfalls of youth.
"My royal father, often taking my face between his hands, would look into my eyes, and thank God that I had not in me the wickedness of the Dolphbergs, the race from which we sprang. It was when I was three-and-twenty that a sudden chill, caught by my father when out hunting, produced a fever which robbed me of him, and I was left an orphan; an orphan queen to reign over a nation.
"I was my father's only child; there was no Salic law to bar me. But as the orphan is ever succoured by heaven, so was I in my lonely royal state upheld by the counsels of a good and great man.
"Your grandfather, my child," she continued turning to Dolores, "the old Don Silvio d'Alta.
"He had been my father's stay in all his troubles; the d'Altas were a race of diplomatists, and when death claimed him your father, Don Juan, took his place."
A soft look came into her eyes as she sat with Dolores' hand in hers, a far-away look; her thoughts were in the times she spoke of.
"Those were happy days, Dolores," she continued, "those first years when your father and I ruled the people of Aquazilia. I had had a reign of ten years when your grandfather died and young Don Juan took the reins of government as my adviser; no one ever thought of contesting his right to it. Was he not a d'Alta?