. Oh, I have
finished about that! You need not look so desperate. Besides, Dal
explains that Leopold is a young man who dominates all around him. He
wishes to take for his bride a girl who could not by any possibility
herself be heiress to a throne. Dal fancies that his desire is to mold
his wife, and therefore to take a girl without too many important and
importunate relatives; for he is not one who would dream of adding to
his greatness by using the wealth or position of a woman. He has all
he needs, or wants, of that sort. And then, Dal reminds me, Leopold
is very partial to England, who helped Rhaetia passively, in the time
of her trouble eight years ago. The fact that you have lived in
England and had an English education, would be favorably regarded both
by Leopold and his Chancellor. And though I've never allowed you to
have a photograph taken, since you were a child (I hate seeing young
girls' faces in the newspapers and magazines; even though they are
Royal, their features need not be public property!) and you have lived
here in such seclusion that you've been little seen, still, the rumor
has reached Rhaetia that you are--good to look at. Leopold has been
heard to say that, whatever else the future Empress of Rhaetia may be,
he won't give his people an ugly woman to reign over them. And so,
altogether--"

"And so, altogether, my references being satisfactory, at a pinch I
might do for the place," cut in Virginia, with the hot, impatient
rebellion of her youth. "Oh, Mother, you think me mad or a fool, I
know; and perhaps I am mad; yet not mad enough not to see that it
would be a great thing, a wonderful thing to be asked in marriage by
the One Man in my world, if--ah, that great 'if'--he had only seen and
fallen in love with me. It might have happened, you know. As you say,
I'm not ugly. And I can be rather pleasant if I choose--so I believe.
If he had only come to this land, to see what I was like, as Royal men
did in the dear old fairy stories, and then had asked me to be his
wife, why, I should have been conceited enough to think it was because
he loved me, even more than because of other things. Then I should
have been happy--yes, dear, I'll confess it to you now--almost happy
enough to die of the great joy and triumph of it. But now I'm not
happy. I will marry Leopold, or I'll marry no man. But I swear to you,
I won't be married to Leopold in Count von Breitstein's hateful old,
cold, cut-and-dried way."