"Well, Aunt Charlotte," said the Princess, "I have, as you know, somewhat grave and personal reasons for not agreeing with you." The Queen turned her face towards her niece. It was a kindly face, but infinitely sad and lined with more cares than fall to the lot of most women of her age. The ingratitude of sons, the death of daughters, the poor troubled husband, old and witless in the King Charles ground-floor suite, weeping for his lost eyesight or sitting smiling mirthlessly over his violin, had marked her. But in spite of all she had kept the cult of royalty. Bloods should not mix. The sacred should not seek the profane. "I know," she said, gently putting her hand out and patting the arm of the Princess, "Brunschweig was no light trial. But are you sure you would have been happier with your ambassador?" "Yes," said the Princess Elsa quickly, "I am certain--if he stamped upon me, if he killed me, I should be happier." "You think so," said the Queen, "and I shall not try to make you think otherwise--" "Because, Aunt Charlotte, neither you nor any one could do that. Julian is as faithful to-day as he was twenty years ago--as loyal, as ready to sacrifice himself. He is the one man to be depended upon." "Ah, because he has remained your lover. But there is my husband. He is a good man. We have been happy these forty years--without a word, without a quarrel, and yet, when his wits are touched, whose name comes to his lips, whose hand does he feel when I stroke his brow?--not mine--not his old wife's, but that of a woman dead these many years, whom he knew before ever he saw me!" "Ah," said the Princess, "but you were not wedded to a hulk of corruption, and when the dear King's words are wild, he is not responsible. You know that as well as I. At any rate there is Julian, and he and I have done our duty. But I am fond of Eitel. He at least can marry whom he likes. Patsy is a gentlewoman of unblemished lineage--older than his own--and if he can win her, at least it will keep my little Eitel from making the mistake which I made." The Queen slowly nodded her head, thinking deeply. "After all," she meditated, "Altschloss, though a respectable house, is neither Hapsburg nor Hanover, and a new man like Eitel, come in by a turn of the dice, may please himself--but--well (here she smiled) if you have said 'Whom Elsa hath blessed let no man put asunder'--I suppose there is no more to be done!" "I wish it were as certain as all that," sighed the Princess, "but, in fact, I am not at all sure about Patsy!" "What," cried the Queen, surprised out of the pensiveness of her matronly gravity, "surely you do not mean to say that the girl would refuse a prince--a reigning prince?" Elsa shook her head sadly.