“She looks jolly too,” he mused, in an injured tone; “and so very clever; and of course she has a beautiful complexion.  All those German girls have.  Your Royal Highness is more than pretty,” he said, bowing his head gravely.  “You look as a princess should look.  I am sure it was one of your ancestors who discovered the dried pea under a dozen mattresses.”  He closed the paper, and sat for a moment with a perplexed smile of consideration.  “Waiter,” he exclaimed, suddenly, “send a messenger-boy to Brentano’s for a copy of the St. James Budget, and bring me the Almanach de Gotha from the library.  It is a little fat red book on the table near the window.”  Then Carlton opened the paper again and propped it up against a carafe, and continued his critical survey of the Princess Aline.  He seized the Almanach, when it came, with some eagerness.

“Hohenwald (Maison de Grasse),” he read, and in small type below it: 

“1.  Ligne cadette (regnante) grand-ducale:  Hohenwald et de Grasse.

“Guillaume-Albert-Frederick-Charles-Louis, Grand-Duc de Hohenwald et de Grasse, etc., etc., etc.”

“That’s the brother, right enough,” muttered Carlton.

And under the heading “Soeurs” he read: 

“4.  Psse Aline.—­Victoria-Beatrix-Louise-Helene, Alt.  Gr.-Duc.  Nee a Grasse, Juin, 1872.”

“Twenty-two years old,” exclaimed Carlton.  “What a perfect age!  I could not have invented a better one.”  He looked from the book to the face before him.  “Now, my dear young lady,” he said, “I know all about you.  You live at Grasse, and you are connected, to judge by your names, with all the English royalties; and very pretty names they are, too—­Aline, Helene, Victoria, Beatrix.  You must be much more English than you are German; and I suppose you live in a little old castle, and your brother has a standing army of twelve men, and some day you are to marry a Russian Grand-Duke, or whoever your brother’s Prime Minister if he has a Prime Minister-decides is best for the politics of your little toy kingdom.  Ah! to think,” exclaimed Carlton, softly, “that such a lovely and glorious creature as that should be sacrificed for so insignificant a thing as the peace of Europe when she might make some young man happy?”

He carried a copy of the paper to his room, and cut the picture of the group out of the page and pasted it carefully on a stiff piece of card-board.  Then he placed it on his dressing-table, in front of a photograph of a young woman in a large silver frame-which was a sign, had the young woman but known it, that her reign for the time being was over.