“What! one of those girls with the light-blue eyes and the hair like tow? No, thank you, Tant’ Ottilie. I had as soon marry a doll.”
“My dear boy, you will marry the wife who is chosen for you, without reference to your tastes, and she will not approve of your running down to Praka every now and then. So we shall be left without you, and I shall lose Bettine, and then I suppose Lida will go, for she too must learn, poor child, that with kings and princesses marriage is an affair not of love but of state, no matter what illusions one may have cherished in one’s youth——”
“Look here, Tant’ Ottilie. I have an idea. Why shouldn’t I marry Lida?—when we’re grown up, I mean, of course. It would be better than Frederike or Hermine, at any rate, and we need not do it for a good long time.”
The manner of the proposal was not flattering, but the boy’s face was suffused with an honest blush, and the Princess could have kissed him there and then. Yet her response was not encouraging.
“My dear boy, you must not think of such a thing! Count Mortimer—I mean, of course, your mother—would never allow it. And pray don’t breathe such an idea to any one. It would be said that I had taken advantage of your stay with us to entrap you into marrying my daughter.”
“But I could swear you didn’t. You never even suggested the idea, much less mentioned the word. So if you were thinking of making Lida marry some prince who would be unkind to her, and that is what was making you miserable, you can feel that it’s all right now. I suppose that I shall have to marry some one, and I’ll marry her some day.”
“Your views are charmingly naïve, dear boy. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to you that Count Mortimer is the person who will choose your wife for you. I daresay he has everything arranged already.”
“Then he will have arranged it in vain. I hate the fellow,—he twists my mother round his little finger, but he shan’t get hold of me. I know too much for him, thanks to hearing you talk, Tant’ Ottilie, and if he expects to have me under his thumb, as he has my mother—why, he’s mistaken, that’s all.”
“Ah, but you don’t realise, Michael, that Count Mortimer is a very important person. Thracia would fall to pieces if he were not at the helm, and you must be prepared to make any sacrifices to keep him in office.”
“But look what a pull that gives him over us! No, Tant’ Ottilie, it will be the other way about after next week. Count Mortimer will have to make the sacrifices if he means to hold office under me.”