“Please don’t think me officious, sir—it’s quite against myself, you know—but do you think it is fair to keep her in ignorance—the Princess, I mean?”
“Miss Félicia Steinherz, you mean,” corrected Félicia’s father. “I think it so far fair that if the Emperor, and my brother Ramon, and all of my family, were to kneel to me to-morrow, and entreat me to come along back, I would refuse, and forbid them to mention the subject to her.”
“Then you feel that your experiment was a success?”
“I don’t pretend that I never felt the difference between the gayest and most polite society in Europe and that of a one-horse American coast-town, and the smart people in New York who would have liked to welcome me with open arms as a multi-millionaire haven’t compensated me much. But I made a determined break out of that elegant prison of mine, just to lead my own life,—a better life, I may fairly say, than that old one,—and if it was to do, I would do it again. A succession of such marriages as mine might yet save the great houses with which I have the honour to be connected; but they won’t see it so. I am glad to have cut myself off from them.”
“But should not Miss Steinherz know the truth?”
“No, sir, she should not.” The words came crisply. “If I told Félicia in the morning all of what I have told you, by the evening, prompted by that little firebrand Maimie, she would have cabled to Vindobona, ‘What price full recognition?’ I did my best to make her as democratic as we thought ourselves, sent her to the most typical American school and college I could find, and she comes back with the most consuming ambition for social distinction that I ever saw in a woman. It comes partly from the way girls are brought up in the States—but if that was all, it might expend itself in trampling under foot every male creature that comes near her. It is mostly the Hohenstaufen blood coming out. She would a million times rather be a poor relation in Ramon’s priest-ridden household than an American heiress of no particular birth—or so she thinks now. With so many needy archdukes to be provided for, it would be easy enough to fix her up with a husband, and she would be plunged back in the life from which I broke away.”
“But if she preferred it?”
“I don’t take any stock in her preferences. When I concluded to Americanise my family, Lord Usk, I guess I began a generation too late. I should have taken myself in hand first, for I have never acquired that subservience to my womenfolk which the true American glories in. The neighbours set my wife down as a domestic martyr, I believe; and I am free to confess that if she had thought less of the honour I had done her, we might both of us have been happier. But Félicia has grown up in full knowledge of her rights as an American woman, and a pretty strong determination to see that she gets them; and I will acknowledge to you that when we fall out the forces on either side are more evenly balanced than I care about. I give my orders and stick to them, and gain the victory that way; but the peace-offerings afterwards come expensive. Can you wonder that I have no particular use for a storm over this?”
“But supposing that she should ever find out——?”
“How’d she do it? But I have watched out for that. When she marries, her fortune will remain in the hands of trustees, though settled strictly on herself. If any other person, either her husband or any member of my family, claims to get control of the money by virtue of any family or state law, I have fixed it that all but the merest pittance will go to the Mayor of New York for the time being in trust for the beautifying of the city. I guess Tammany won’t have such a chance go by, and my noble relations must just climb down.”