Her first act of sovereignty was to change her vassal's
name.
"I don't like Mattie; it ain't a bit romantic. I had a friend in
Bucyrus whose name was Mattie, and she found out somehow--I believe the
teacher told her--that Queen Matilda and Queen Maud was the same thing
in England. So you're Maud!" and Maud she was henceforward, though her
tyrant made her spell it Maude. "It's more elegant with an _e_," she
said.
Maud was fourteen and her school-days were ending when she made this
new acquaintance. She formed for Azalea Windora one of those violent
idolatries peculiar to her sex and age, and in a fort-' night she
seemed a different person. Azalea was rather clever at her books, and
Maud dug at her lessons from morning till night to keep abreast of her.
Her idol was exquisitely neat in her dress, and Maud acquired, as if by
magic, a scrupulous care of her person. Azalea's blonde head was full
of pernicious sentimentality, though she was saved from actual
indiscretions by her cold and vaporous temperament. In dreams and
fancies, she was wooed and won a dozen times a day by splendid
cavaliers of every race and degree; and as she was thoroughly false and
vain, she detailed these airy adventures, part of which she had
imagined and part read in weekly story-papers, to her worshipper, who
listened with wide eyeballs, and a heart which was just beginning to
learn how to beat.
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