Heiress-apparent

Apprehensive that a too intimate connexion with foreign interests might interfere with their own, that sagacious people usually allied their princesses of the blood to the minor reigning rajahs of India, and their heiresses-apparent to such of the offspring of the same princes as were out of the view of a crown.

Fortunately for herself, the day of trial found Bell possessed of spirit and energy not always remaining to those who have been heiresses-apparent.

Up to the age of forty-eight, Zoë lived in retirement in the Gynecea, with her eldest sister, Theodora. The two heiresses-apparent to the throne had thus become “old maids.”