“The ship is weighing anchor!” she exclaimed. “And all but the usual guard have received orders—by telegraph from Vienna—to return to Trieste. And that is not all! I was asked a moment ago to look through the spy-glass—a steam-yacht is approaching from the Italian coast—they say it is Mr. Abbott’s. Can Franz have gone mad? Good God! can he be dead?”
Ranata dashed past her, and up the stair to the tower-room, where she had spent so many hours scanning the horizon through the glass. A moment later, in its burgee, she had read the personality of the rapidly approaching yacht. It was the Alexandra; and the war-ship was steaming in the opposite direction.
When she turned to the agitated Obersthofmeisterin, close upon her heels, she was trembling so violently she hardly could stand, her cheeks were blazing, and she thrust her hands into her heavy hair, and pulled it down as if its weight were intolerable.
“It means,” she stammered—“it means—cannot you see?—he has won—already—I am to marry him!” And then Maria Leopoldina felt as if her nerves had been assaulted by a swarm of hornets. Ranata collapsed upon a chair, and flew into hysterics. She had suffered in silence during that first awful week in the Hofburg, pride carrying her successfully through even that ordeal; and she had been calm enough during the past fortnight of solitude and uncertainty; but in the face of this sudden and violent prospect of victory and immediate happiness, her suppressed energies leaped their walls, and she cried and laughed and talked incoherent phrases until the duenna could stand no more and took refuge in a dead faint.
Ranata promptly recovered her reason, and applied the necessary restoratives without summoning help. When she had led her vibrating relative to a sofa, and fetched a bottle of salts, she arranged her own hair and face, and returned to the tower to watch the approach of the yacht. It steamed swiftly over the calm sea, but to Ranata’s excited nerves hours passed before she could read the ensign and burgee without the aid of the glass. She was now schooled to any surprise, but experienced a sharp thrill nevertheless when the proud craft, instead of passing the castle and making for Trieste, deliberately swung about and dropped anchor upon the exact spot where the war-ship had kept its vigilant watch. A moment later it ran up two flags, side by side—the Austrian and the American.
Ranata sank again upon a chair and held her breath, expecting to see a boat lowered and Fessenden descend. But the long moments passed—an hour passed; the incident appeared to be closed for the present. Officers sauntered up and down the deck, sailors bustled about, but no one appeared to manifest any interest in the castle. Finally she was forced to conclude that, whatever Fessenden had accomplished in Vienna, his yacht had come without him.
To remain inactive any longer was beyond her electrified nerves. She regarded Maria Leopoldina’s authority as at an end, and it was evident that the shaken Obersthofmeisterin was of the same opinion, for she had dragged herself to her room, and was seen no more that day. Ranata sent an invitation to the captain and the officers of the yacht to lunch at the castle. They lowered the flags and returned with the messenger; and although there was an animated party in the little dining-room up-stairs, all her subtle questioning was able to extract were the bare facts that on the previous evening they had received orders from their master in Vienna to proceed in the morning to Miramar, run up the two flags as they anchored off the castle, and not to lower them until they had received some answering signal from her. They were naïvely curious, and, face to face with the Archduchess beloved of their chief, frankly suspicious of the sequel. It was evident, however, that her information was more meagre than theirs, and they were so glad to get back to the tonic sweetness of the Adriatic after their fortnight at Venice, most malodorous of cities, and so enchanted with this beautiful princess and her castle, that they were content without knowledge, Yankees though they were.
After luncheon Ranata took them for a walk through the gardens and woods of the park, keeping them until they bored her, for she dreaded solitude and looked forward to the night with terror. But before the night came her nerves were to be lifted from the rack.
XXXVI
It was sundown and she stood on the terrace before the windows of the state dining-room on the eastern side of the castle, watching the shadows darken the woods rising almost perpendicularly before her. She heard the train go by high on the mountain, and sighed impatiently. She was at liberty to take any train up there she wished, and here she must remain in maddening unquiet. She even felt some impatience with Fessenden, who surely might have sent her a telegram.