"
"Ah, I wish I, too, could forget it, but I can't," she answered with a
sigh, glancing from under her preposterously long lashes toward Max
and Twonette.
"How came you to take the name Yolanda?" I asked.
"Grandfather wished to give me the name in baptism," she answered, "but
Mary fell to my lot. I like the present arrangement. Mary is the name of
the princess--the unhappy, faulty princess. Yolanda is my name. Almost
every happy hour I have ever spent has been as Yolanda. You cannot know
the wide difference between me and the Princess Mary. It is, Sir Karl,
as if we were two persons."
She spoke very earnestly, and I could see that there was no mirth in her
heart when she thought of herself as the Princess Mary; she was
not jesting.
"I don't know the princess," I said laughingly, "but I know Yolanda."
"Yes; I'll tell you a great secret, Sir Karl. The Princess Mary is not
at all an agreeable person. She is morose, revengeful, haughty, cold--"
here her voice dropped to a whisper, "and, Sir Karl, she lies--she lies.
While Yolanda--well, Yolanda at least is not cold, and I--I think she is
a very delightful person. Don't you?"
There was a troubled, eager expression in her eyes that told plainly she
was in earnest. To Yolanda the princess was another person.
"Yolanda is very sure of me," I answered.
"Ah, that she is," answered the girl. You see, this was a real case of
billing and cooing between December and May.
A short silence followed, during which Yolanda glanced furtively toward
Max and Twonette.
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