“By George!” he said, fervently, “Aleck, you are great—the greatest woman in the whole earth! I can’t ever learn the whole size of you. I can’t ever learn the immeasurable deeps of you. Here I’ve been considering myself qualified to criticise your game. I! Why, if I had stopped to think, I’d have known you had a lone hand up your sleeve. Now, dear heart, I’m all red-hot impatience—tell me about it!”

The flattered and happy woman put her lips to his ear and whispered a princely name. It made him catch his breath, it lit his face with exultation.

“Land!” he said, “it’s a stunning catch! He’s got a gambling-hell, and a graveyard, and a bishop, and a cathedral—all his very own. And all gilt-edged five-hundred-per-cent. stock, every detail of it; the tidiest little property in Europe. And that graveyard—it’s the selectest in the world: none but suicides admitted; yes, sir, and the free-list suspended, too, all the time. There isn’t much land in the principality, but there’s enough: eight hundred acres in the graveyard and forty-two outside. It’s a sovereignty—that’s the main thing; land’s nothing. There’s plenty land, Sahara’s drugged with it.”

Aleck glowed; she was profoundly happy. She said:

“Think of it, Sally—it is a family that has never married outside the Royal and Imperial Houses of Europe: our grandchildren will sit upon thrones!”

“True as you live, Aleck—and bear sceptres, too; and handle them as naturally and nonchalantly as I handle a yardstick. It’s a grand catch, Aleck. He’s corralled, is he? Can’t get away? You didn’t take him on a margin?”

“No. Trust me for that. He’s not a liability, he’s an asset. So is the other one.”

“Who is it, Aleck?”

“His Royal Highness Sigismund-Siegfried-Lauenfeld-Dinkelspiel-Schwartzenberg Blutwurst, Hereditary Grand Duke of Katzenyammer.”

“No! You can’t mean it!”

“It’s as true as I’m sitting here, I give you my word,” she answered.

His cup was full, and he hugged her to his heart with rapture, saying:

“How wonderful it all seems, and how beautiful! It’s one of the oldest and noblest of the three hundred and sixty-four ancient German principalities, and one of the few that was allowed to retain its royal estate when Bismarck got done trimming them. I know that farm, I’ve been there. It’s got a rope-walk and a candle-factory and an army. Standing army. Infantry and cavalry. Three soldiers and a horse. Aleck, it’s been a long wait, and full of heartbreak and hope deferred, but God knows I am happy now. Happy, and grateful to you, my own, who have done it all. When is it to be?”

“Next Sunday.”

“Good. And we’ll want to do these weddings up in the very regalest style that’s going. It’s properly due to the royal quality of the parties of the first part. Now as I understand it, there is only one kind of marriage that is sacred to royalty, exclusive to royalty: it’s the morganatic.”

“What do they call it that for, Sally?”

“I don’t know; but anyway it’s royal, and royal only.”

“Then we will insist upon it. More—I will compel it. It is morganatic marriage or none.”