Hammerfeldt's persistent pressure drove the love-lorn Baron, still undrowned (had the watchers been too vigilant?), on a long foreign tour, and in three months the Princess and Victoria returned. I saw at once that the new relations were permanently established between them; my mother displayed an almost ostentatious abdication of authority; her whole air declared that since Victoria chose to walk alone, alone in good truth she should walk. It was the attitude of a proud and domineering nature that answers any objection to its sway by a wholesale disclaimer at once of power and responsibility. Victoria accepted her mother's resolution, but rather with resentment than gratitude. They had managed the affair badly; my mother had lost influence without gaining affection; my sister had forfeited guidance but not achieved a true liberty. She was hardly more her own mistress than before; Hammerfeldt, screened behind me, now trammelled her, and she had a statesman to deal with instead of a mother. Only once she spoke to me concerning the Baron and his affair; the three months had wrought some change here also.
"I was very silly," she said impatiently. "I know that well enough."
"Then why don't you make it up with mother?" I ventured to suggest.
"Mother behaved odiously," she declared. "I can never forgive her the way she treated me."
The grievance then had shifted its ground; not what the Princess had done, but the manner in which she had done it was now the head and front of her offence. It needed little acquaintance with the world to recognise that matters were not improved by this change; one may come to recognise that common sense was with the enemy; vanity at once takes refuge in the conviction that his awkwardness, rudeness, or cruelty in advancing his case was responsible for all the trouble.
"If she had been kind, I should have seen it all directly," said Victoria. And in this it may very well be that Victoria was not altogether wrong.
The position was, however, inconsistent with even moderate comfort. There was a way of ending it, obvious, I suppose, to everybody save myself, but seeming rather startling to my youthful mind. In six months now Victoria would be eighteen, and eighteen is a marriageable age. Victoria must be married; my mother and Hammerfeldt went husband-hunting. As soon as I heard of the scheme I was ready with brotherly sympathy, and even cherished the idea of interposing a hitherto untried royal veto on such premature haste and cruel forcing of a girl's inclination. Victoria received my advances with visible surprise. Did I suppose, she asked, that she was so happy at home as to shrink from marriage? Would not such a step be rather an emancipation than a banishment? (I paraphrase and condense her observation.) Did I not perceive that she must hail the prospect with relief? I was to know that her mother and herself were at one on this matter; she was obliged for my kindness, but thought that I need not concern myself in the matter. Considerably relieved, not less puzzled, with a picture of Victoria sobbing and the Baron walking (well watched) by the river's brink, I withdrew from my sister's presence. It occurred to me that to take a husband in order to escape from a mother was a peculiar step; I have since seen reason to suppose that it is more common than I imagined.