I expressed my astonishment and pleasure at the news, and the Princess gave me several reasons why she was not so surprised as some people, although I am convinced that she really had known very little beforehand. But at any rate she thought it most interesting that they should become engaged “in Mamma’s sitting-room.” The following September the Crown Prince announced, in a series of laconic telegrams to his friends, his own engagement to the young Duchess Cécile of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. “We are engaged.--William and Cécile,” was the message sent by the happy _Braut-paar_. The Crown Prince had from early youth been frequently in love with various pretty young girls within the range of his acquaintanceship. But these harmless little love-affairs, so frank, so delightfully obvious, and so soon dispersed into thin air by the advent of some new and equally ineligible charmer, culminated at last in his meeting with the young Duchess Cécile, a dark-eyed, clear-complexioned, tall, slim maiden, just out of the schoolroom. Any one seeing the happy pair together need not have troubled to ask if they were in love with each other. It was palpably the case, and they had not the least desire to conceal the fact. When the young _Braut_ came to stay at the _Neues Palais_ after her engagement, a very small party--just the ladies-in-waiting and the two young Princesses--were dining together in the Apollo-Saal, for the Emperor and Empress were absent for the day. Suddenly a great clattering was heard outside the window overlooking the terrace, and the Crown Prince appeared on horseback, having ridden up the stone steps. His young _Braut_ was charmed at his daring, and they sat down at table side by side, obviously absorbed in each other, while the ladies talked about the weather and tried to be as unobtrusive as possible. They were as genuinely and whole-heartedly attracted, as palpably all-in-all to each other, as the poorest young couple who bravely face the world together. Nothing but personal liking entered into their marriage. It is a pity that people are so sceptical as to any royal alliance being founded on any other than political considerations. Yet politics are rarely either forwarded or hindered nowadays by matrimonial arrangements; and if propinquity, as most people believe, is the chief factor in bringing about the usual love-affair, then it is obviously most natural for a prince to be attracted towards the pretty girl--for many princesses are remarkably pretty--whom he meets on equal terms, with whom there is no consciousness of difference of rank, the girl who has been brought up in the same atmosphere as himself, with whom familiarity has bred a certain contempt for court ceremonies and court traditions, who is related, perhaps, like himself, to various crowned heads whom they both call “Uncle,” one with whom he has a common ground of interest, bonds of relationship and mutual knowledge.