Inheritance and succession -- Fiction; Islands -- Fiction; Love stories; Nobility -- Fiction
"How could any one sleep? Neenah found this dress for me--aren't these
baggy trousers funny? She rifled the late Mr. Wyckholme's wardrobe. This
costume once adorned a sultana, I'm told. It is a most priceless
treasure. I wore it to-night because I was much less conspicuous as a
sultana than I might have been had I gone to the wall as a princess."
"I like you best as the Princess," he said, frankly surveying her in the
grey light.
"I think I like myself as the Princess, too," she said naïvely. He
sighed deeply. They were quite close to the excited group on the terrace
when she said: "I am very, very happy now, after the most miserable
night I have ever known. I was so troubled and afraid----"
"Just because I went away for that little while? Don't forget that I am
soon to go out from you for all time. How then?"
"Ah, but then I will have Paris," she cried gaily. He was puzzled by her
mood--but then, why not? What could he be expected to know of the moods
of royal princesses? No more than he could know of their loves.
Lady Deppingham was got to bed at once. The Princess, more thrilled by
excitement than she ever had been in her life, attended her friend. In
the sanctity of her chamber, the exhausted young Englishwoman bared her
soul to this wise, sympathetic young woman in Persian vestment.
"Genevra," she said solemnly, in the end, "take warning from my example.
When you once are married, don't trifle with other men--not even if you
shouldn't love your husband. Sooner or later you'd get tripped up. It
doesn't pay, my dear. I never realised until tonight how much I really
care for Deppy and I am horribly afraid that I've lost something I can
never recover. I've made him unhappy and--and--all that. Can you tell me
what it is that made me--but never mind! I'm going to be good."
"You were not in love with Mr. Browne. That is why I can't understand
you, Agnes."
"My dear, I don't understand myself. How can I expect you or my husband
to understand me? How could I expect it of Bobby Browne? Oh, dear; oh,
dear, how tired I am! I think I shall never move out of this bed again.
What a horrible, horrible time I've had." She sat up suddenly and stared
wide-eyed before her, looking upon phantoms that came out of the hours
just gone.
"Hush, dear! Lie down and go to sleep. You will feel better in a little
while." Lady Agnes abruptly turned to her with a light in her eyes that
checked the kindly impulses.
"Genevra, you are in love--madly in love with Hollingsworth Chase. Take
my advice: marry him. He's one man in a--" Genevra placed her hand over
the lips of the feverish young woman.
"I will not listen to anything more about Mr. Chase," she said firmly.
"I am tired--tired to death of being told that I should marry him."
"But you love him," Lady Agnes managed to mumble, despite the gentle
impediment.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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