ts,
died when Priscilla was sixteen. Her sisters, one older and one
younger than herself, were both far less pleasing to look upon than
she was, and much more difficult to manage; yet each married a
suitable prince and each became a credit to her House, while as for
Priscilla,--well, as for Priscilla, I propose to describe her dreadful
conduct.

But first her appearance. She was well above the average height of
woman; a desirable thing in a princess, who, before everything, must
impress the public with her dignity. She had a long pointed chin, and
a sweet mouth with full lips that looked most kind. Her nose was not
quite straight, one side of it being the least bit different from the
other,--a slight crookedness that gave her face a charm absolutely
beyond the reach of those whose features are what is known as
chiselled. Her skin was of that fairness that freckles readily in hot
summers or on winter days when the sun shines brightly on the snow, a
delicate soft skin that is seen sometimes with golden eyelashes and
eyebrows, and hair that is more red than gold. Priscilla had these
eyelashes and eyebrows and this hair, and she had besides beautiful
grey-blue eyes--calm pools of thought, the court poet called them,
when her having a birthday compelled him to official raptures; and
because everybody felt sure they were not really anything of the kind
the poet's utterance was received with acclamations. Indeed, a
princess who should possess such pools would be most undesirable--in
Lothen-Kunitz nothing short of a calamity; for had they not had one
already? It was what had been the matter with the deceased Grand
Duchess; she would think, and no one could stop her, and her life in
consequence was a burden to herself and to everybody else at her
court. Priscilla, however, was very silent. She had never expressed an
opinion, and the inference was that she had no opinion to express. She
had not criticized, she had not argued, she had been tractable,
obedient, meek. Yet her sisters, who had often criticized and argued,
and who had rarely been obedient and never meek, became as I have said
the wives of appropriate princes, while Priscilla,--well, he who runs
may read what it was that Priscilla became.

But first as to where she lived. The Grand Duchy of Lothen-Kunitz lies
in the south of Europe; that smiling region of fruitful plains,
forest-clothed hills, and broad rivers. It is one of the first places
Spring stops at on her wa