“I cannot say, my dear,” answered Maria Leopoldina. “It would not take him long to come back, you know; and then you have not given your formal consent to marriage with Aloys.”
“That is a point I had quite forgotten,” said Ranata dryly. “I hope my father and my prospective husband are not unduly impatient.”
On the following day, after the surcease of the sleeping-powder, and the inevitable reaction from many days of torment, she felt almost light-hearted and frivolous, and wondered if it were possible to suffer like that more than once in a lifetime. Passing a window her eye was idly attracted by the shabby figure of a tourist. It was a bright winter’s day, and visitors to the great capital came to look at the fine bronze of old Emperor Franz and the gilded wall where the drawbridge had been. Ranata envied them deeply, nameless as no doubt they were—she had a vague idea that all sight-seers were a composite with a number—for they had their precious liberty, no doubt belonged to such free and happy countries as England and America.
This insignificant little woman carried a Baedeker, which she read industriously, walking round and round the statue, with but an occasional upward glance at the work of art. Alexandra had told Ranata of tourists who read their Baedekers on the Rhine, forgetting to look at the historic monuments described, and she watched this illustration with some amusement. Suddenly her brows met, and she drew closer to the window. There was something oddly familiar in the little deliberate steps, in the fashion of opening and closing the book. And this tourist had been here on other days, when her brain was too surcharged to piece impression to thought! In a moment the girl paused with her back to the window, and, raising her hand, nervously twisted a curl on the right of her neck. It was Vilma Festetics.
She turned, her curious tourist eye roving over the ugly wall of the palace, concealing unimaginable splendors! She even sighed, and let her mouth fall with discontent. Ranata shook the edge of the curtain. Vilma came forward laggingly, her eyes on her book. The guard was inspecting the peculiar antics of another tourist, who had a bulge beneath his coat. When Vilma was directly beneath the window Ranata threw it open and leaned out.
“He has not gone,” said Vilma distinctly, “and he wants your answer before he proceeds further.”
And Ranata answered as distinctly: “Yes. Yes. Yes.”
It was all over in an instant. Vilma had shot through the archway and mingled with the throng in the Michaelerplatz and Ranata had closed her window before the astounded guards realized they had been outwitted.
Ranata sat down to await the consequences of her act. Her heart sang, and she did not care in the least what they might be. Indeed, closer imprisonment, probably a change of quarters, was the worst she had to fear; her father was not benighted enough to put her in solitary confinement, nor even on bread and water. She wondered at her doubts, at her facile acceptance of a news item that no doubt had been inserted by order of the Emperor. She knew now that Fessenden had made his plans and that he would not fail. She looked back in amazement at the power and instinct of woman to torment herself, and she also felt a throb of satisfaction that she should not grow old and ugly in the course of a month, as she had fully expected to do. Finally she shed tears of wondering gratitude, and for a few moments felt as humble as a man could wish.