"In soft, loving whispers, he proposed that we should be married secretly; he had a priest all ready willing to perform the ceremony.
"Then he would be sure of me and could live content.
"In a few months his former alliance would be set aside; before all the world we could be married again. A grand state ceremony if I would have it so.
"I listened to him, and my heart beat high as he spoke, yet I doubted in my saner moments whether I should ever be permitted to marry him by my ministers and my people were he free that very day.
"Poor fool that I was, he bent me to his will within a week, and he had no greater advocate for his cause than the Baroness d'Altenstein, my lady, though, poor soul, she only meant me well. But she was romantic, and had not long been married to a man she loved, a courtier from the country of the Dolphbergs; she had spent her honeymoon in their capital, and was an advocate for love at any price.
"Knowing I loved the Prince of Rittersheim, she worked only to make me happy by a marriage with him.
"With her knowledge only, I slipped away from Court for a week and went through a ceremony of marriage with the Prince at a little village church hidden away in the mountains a hundred miles from Valoro.
"I married him in the dress and under the name of a simple peasant woman, not knowing—as he did—that such a ceremony was utterly null and void.
"Was I happy? I think he loved me then—a little." A soft, sad look overspread the sweet old face; she gazed away across the lake in silence for a few moments. It seemed that, even after all these years, that time of love and falseness held some tender recollection still.
She came, as it were, to herself almost directly, and heaving a great sigh, went on—