"Go on! Did I not tell you to spare us your comparatives?" cried Helene the Princess, letting her broidery slip to the ground in her consuming interest.
"Well," said Boris, quickly sobered, "it was in truth a mighty quaint thing to see. The Princess Margaret took the young man in her arms and caught him to her. The Lady Theresa kept hold of his wrist. They looked at each other a moment without speech, eye countering eye like knights at a——"
"Go on!" the Princess thundered, if indeed a silvern voice can be said to thunder.
"'Give him up to me! He is mine!' cried the Princess.
"'He is mine!' answered very haughtily the lady of the Isle Rugen—'Who are you?' 'And you?' cried both at once, flinging their heads back, but never for a moment letting go with their hands. The youth, being dazed, said nothing, nor so much as moved.
"'I am his mother!' said the Lady Theresa, speaking first.
"'I am his wife!' said the Princess.
"Then the woman who had borne the young man gave him into his wife's arms without a word, and the Princess gathered him to her bosom and crooned over him, that being her right. But his mother stepped back among the crowd and drew the hood of her cloak over her head that no man might look upon her face."
"Bravo!" cried Helene, clapping her hands, "it was her right!"
"Little one," said her husband, pointing to the boy on the terrace beneath, who was lashing a toy horse of wood with all his baby might, "I wonder if you will think so when another woman takes him from you!"