“It will be the day of my death.”

“No; the day when you leave this place.  The day on which you return to your native land to become there a reigning lord, and leave the poor humbled Princess Ludovicka behind here deserted and alone.”

“But you?  Will you not go with me?” he asked, in amazement.  “Will not my country be yours?  And if I am a reigning lord, will you not stand as sovereign lady by my side?”

“I?” asked she, bewildered.  “How do you mean?  I do not understand you.”

“I mean,” he whispered softly, while he clasped her closely to himself—­“I mean that you shall accompany me as my wife.”

“But!” cried she, smiling, and with an expression of radiant joy—­“but you have never said that I should be your wife.”

“Have I not told you that I love you?  Have I not been repeating to you for a year that I love you?  And does it not naturally follow that you and you alone are to be my wife?”

“But they will not suffer it, Frederick!” cried she, with an expression of pain.  “No, they will never suffer you to make me your wife.”

“Who will not suffer it, Ludovicka?”

“Your parents will not suffer it, and the great Lord von Schwarzenberg, who rules your father, as my mother has told me, and Herr von Leuchtmar, who rules you and—­”

“Nobody rules me,” interrupted he indignantly, and a flush of anger or shame suffused his face.  “No, nobody rules me, and I shall never be subject to any other will than my own.”

“So you say now, Frederick, while you look into my eyes, while you are at my side.  But to-morrow, when I am no longer by, when your tutor shall have proved with his cold, matter-of-fact arguments that the poor Princess Ludovicka is no fit match for the Electoral Prince of Brandenburg—­to-morrow, when your tutor will chide his beloved pupil for ever having allowed so foolish a love to enter his heart, then—­”

“I am a pupil no longer,” interrupted he with glowing cheek.  “I am seventeen years old, and no tutor has any more power over me.”

She seemed not to have heard him, and continued in her sweet, melancholy voice:  “To-morrow, when perhaps another messenger comes to summon you home, when he brings you a letter from your father with the command to set forth immediately, in which you are informed that he has selected a bride for you, oh, then will the Electoral Prince Frederick William be naught but the obedient son, who obeys his father’s commands, who leaves this country to seek his native land, and to wed the bride who has been chosen for him by his father.”

“No!” shouted the Electoral Prince fiercely, while he leaped up from the divan, and stamped his foot upon the ground—­“I say no, and once more no.  I shall not do what they order.  I shall only follow my own will.  And it is my will, my fixed, unalterable will, to make you my wife, and this will I shall carry into effect, despite my father, the German Emperor, and the whole world.  Ludovicka, I here offer you my hand.  Do you accept it?  Will you be my wife?”