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136 "And you, Ditlinde, if I'm not mistaken you're as happy as, even happier than, before. I don't say that you have got red cheeks, like Philipp from his peat; you always were a bit transparent, and you are still. But you look flourishing. I haven't yet asked, since you married, but I think there's nothing to worry about in connexion with you."

She sat in an easy position, with her arm lightly folded across her lap.

"Yes," she said, "I'm all right, Klaus Heinrich, your eyes don't deceive you, and it would be ungrateful of me not to acknowledge my good fortune. You see, I know quite well that many people in the country are disappointed by my marriage and say that I have ruined myself, and demeaned myself, and so on. And such people are not far to seek, for brother Albrecht, as you know as well as I do, in his heart despises my dear Philipp and me into the bargain, and can't abide him, and calls him privately a tradesman and shopkeeper. But that doesn't bother me, for I meant it when I accepted Philipp's hand—seized it, I would say, if it didn't sound so wild—accepted it because it was warm and honest, and offered to take me away from the Old Schloss. For when I look back and think of the Old Schloss and life in it as I should have gone on living if if it had not been for dear Philipp, I shudder, Klaus Heinrich, and I feel that I could not have borne it and should have become strange and queer like poor mamma. I am a bit delicate naturally, as you know, I should have simply gone under in so much desolation and sadness, and when dear Philipp came, I thought: now's your chance. And when people say that I am a bad Princess, because I have in a way abdicated, and fled here where It is rather warmer and more friendly, and when they say that I lack dignity or consciousness of Highness, or whatever they call it, they are stupid and ignorant, Klaus Heinrich, because I have too much, I have on the contrary too much of it, that's a