"You are indolent--" remonstrated the lady.
"You--since we attempt the descriptive," said his Highness,--"are adorable."
"Which, by the way, vanished with my waist."
"'The woman tempted me,'" quoted the Grand Duke; and added, reflectively, "Amalia, it is very singular--"
"Nay, I am afraid," the Baroness lamented, "it is rather notoriously plural."
But the Grand Duke waved a dignified dissent, and continued, "--that I could never resist green eyes of a peculiar shade."
The Baroness, becoming vastly interested in the structure of her fan, went on, with some severity, "Your reputation--"
"--is bad; and you go from bad to worse."
"By no means," said his Highness, "since when I was nineteen--"
"I will not believe it even of you!" cried the Baroness von Altenburg.
"I assure you," his Highness protested, gravely, "I was then a devil of a fellow! She was only twenty, and she, too, had big green eyes--"
"And by this late period," said the lady, "has in addition an infinity of grandchildren."
"I happen to be barely forty!" the Grand Duke said, with dignity.
"In which event the _Almanachen_ dating, say, from 1710--"
"Are not unmarred by an occasional misprint. Truly I lament the ways of all typographers, and I will explain the cause of their depravity, in Vienna."
"'And Sapphira,'" murmured his Highness, "'fell down straightway at his feet, and yielded up the ghost!' So beware, Amalia!"
"Nor in effect am I. Then we will let Europe frown and journalists moralize, while we two gallop forward on the road that leads to Vienna and heaven?"
"There is in this case no possible 'or.' Once out of Noumaria, we leave all things behind save happiness."
"Among these trifles, your Highness, is a duchy."
"Hein?" said the Grand Duke; "what is it? A mere dot on the map, a pawn in the game of politics. I give up the pawn and take--the queen."
"That is unwise," said the Baroness, with composure, "and, besides, you are hurting my hand. Apropos of the queen--the Grand Duchess--"
"Will heartily thank God for her deliverance. She will renounce me before the world, and in secret almost worship me for my consideration."
"Yet a true woman," said the Baroness, oracularly, "will follow a husband--"
"Till his wife makes her stop," said the little Grand Duke, his tone implying that he knew whereof he spoke.