The Princess Aline | Page 5

to make me forget all the women I
knew before I met her? I think not. As a matter of fact, I really deserve
a great deal of credit for remaining single, for I am naturally very
affectionate; but when I see what poor husbands my friends make, I
prefer to stay as I am until I am sure that I will make a better one. It is
only fair to the woman."
Carlton was sitting in the club alone. He had that sense of superiority
over his fellows and of irresponsibility to the world about him that
comes to a man when he knows that his trunks are being packed and
that his state-room is engaged. He was leaving New York long before
most of his friends could get away. He did not know just where he was
going, and preferred not to know. He wished to have a complete
holiday, and to see Europe as an idle tourist, and not as an artist with an
eye to his own improvement. He had plenty of time and money; he was
sure to run across friends in the big cities, and acquaintances he could
make or not, as he pleased, en route. He was not sorry to go. His going
would serve to put an end to what gossip there might be of his
engagement to numerous young women whose admiration for him as
an artist, he was beginning to fear, had taken on a more personal tinge.
"I wish," he said, gloomily, "I didn't like people so well. It seems to
cause them and me such a lot of trouble."

He sighed, and stretched out his hand for a copy of one of the English
illustrated papers. It had a fresher interest to him because the next
number of it that he would see would be in the city in which it was
printed. The paper in his hands was the St. James Budget, and it
contained much fashionable intelligence concerning the preparations
for a royal wedding which was soon to take place between members of
two of the reigning families of Europe. There was on one page a
half-tone reproduction of a photograph, which showed a group of
young people belonging to several of these reigning families, with their
names and titles printed above and below the picture. They were
princesses, archdukes, or grand-dukes, and they were dressed like
young English men and women, and with no sign about them of their
possible military or social rank.
One of the young princesses in the photograph was looking out of it
and smiling in a tolerant, amused way, as though she had thought of
something which she could not wait to enjoy until after the picture was
taken. She was not posing consciously, as were some of the others, but
was sitting in a natural attitude, with one arm over the back of her chair,
and with her hands clasped before her. Her face was full of a fine
intelligence and humor, and though one of the other princesses in the
group was far more beautiful, this particular one had a much more
high-bred air, and there was something of a challenge in her smile that
made any one who looked at the picture smile also. Carlton studied the
face for some time, and mentally approved of its beauty; the others
seemed in comparison wooden and unindividual, but this one looked
like a person he might have known, and whom he would certainly have
liked. He turned the page and surveyed the features of the Oxford crew
with lesser interest, and then turned the page again and gazed critically
and severely at the face of the princess with the high-bred smile. He
had hoped that he would find it less interesting at a second glance, but
it did not prove to be so.
"`The Princess Aline of Hohenwald,'" he read. "She's probably engaged
to one of those Johnnies beside her, and the Grand-Duke of Hohenwald
behind her must be her brother." He put the paper down and went into
luncheon, and diverted himself by mixing a salad dressing; but after a

few moments he stopped in the midst of this employment, and told the
waiter, with some unnecessary sharpness, to bring him the last copy of
the St. James Budget.
"Confound it!" he added, to himself.
He opened the paper with a touch of impatience and gazed long and
earnestly at the face of the Princess Aline, who continued to return his
look with the same smile of amused tolerance. Carlton noted every
detail of her tailor-made gown, of her high mannish collar, of her tie,
and even the rings on her hand. There was nothing about her of which
he could fairly disapprove. He wondered why it was that she