She was aware that because she had not had the time to wash her hair for the last week, it had lost some of the red sparkle that her mother had always told her came from an Austrian ancestress.
“It is funny, Tarina,” she reflected, “but the strain of red hair of the Viennese, which has always been so much admired, will skip perhaps two generations in my family and then reappear.”
“Was my great-grandmother very beautiful?” Tarina had asked.
“So I have always heard,” her mother replied, “and also extremely talented. She had a splendid voice and her diaries tell us that she was greatly in demand at parties in Vienna. On two occasions she sang at the Schonbrunn Palace in front of the Emperor Franz Joseph and Empress Elizabeth, who also had red hair.”
“Do you think I would have a good voice
