“His corkscrew will do him no good. Nevertheless, I feel a certain apprehension—feminine, I suppose. He is the one person who has done me the honor to believe that I might play with politics in a manner to disconcert his clever manipulation of my father, and I have shown my dislike of him by ignoring his existence, as far as possible. He detests me; nevertheless, if I am able to convince him that I have no purpose behind the one I have advanced, I believe he will make no opposition to my plan: he has no desire to see William in the Hofburg and himself in obscurity. He will not have the least objection to using me—he is the sort to feel quite sure that a woman can be disposed of the moment a man sees fit. But if he thought that I had any ulterior design—”
“Try American diplomacy on him if you get in too deep—speak out bluntly and agitate his guile. Let him squirm himself into a corner, and then tell him to speak out or get out.”
“I sometimes feel half an American,” said the Archduchess Ranata Theresia.
Down the long front of the southeast wing of the palace is a suite of some ten or twelve rooms, large and small, beginning with the private dining-room and finishing with the red reception-room. The yellow Throne Room, or Great Hall of Ceremonies, runs parallel, occupying the width of the circle-room and audience-chamber, which flank it at one end, and of the circle-room and blue drawing-room of its southern termination. From this last circle-room opens another, which in turn leads to the private apartments occupied by the Queen of Hungary when there is one. The windows of these apartments, closed during the clouded last years of Elizabeth’s life and since her death, were now open to the sun; the hangings were losing their musty odor, and the numerous belongings of Ranata had already obliterated the little individualities of the Empress. Ranata, whose strong soul had little in common with the unhappy woman who had permitted life to crush her, had tender pity for her mother’s memory, but no great amount of sentiment. Not only were the rooms dingy and oppressive, but her own individuality was too strong to exist comfortably in surroundings stamped throughout many years by that of another; she had made up her mind that the day after her father’s decision, whatever it might be, she should refurnish the four rooms of her suite; and when the Emperor’s letter arrived they were full of stuffs, sent up from Pest for the approval of her Imperial Highness. Some pieces of curious brocade were pinned into the panels, and the dusty old rugs had vanished. The girls, ordered to remain in strict seclusion during this week of deliberation, had entertained themselves in their own fashion.
“I cannot receive him here,” said the Archduchess, when she received the humble petition of the great minister for an audience. “Besides, I don’t want to. If I could help it no one should set foot in my personal surroundings—atmosphere—who was even uncongenial to me.”
“It is a family failing,” said Alexandra dryly. “But I always admired Ludvig for putting his head out of the window when he had to have his tooth pulled rather than have the royal atmosphere polluted by a dentist. It may have been uncomfortable for both, but it was magnificently consistent.”
“I am not Ludvig, and I have no intention of making a fool of myself,” replied the Archduchess, also with some dryness. “I’ll receive him in the tea-room; I like the blue walls. Shall I wear black or white? I look more imposing in black.”
“Oh, look your guileless best—white, by all means.”
Therefore, Ranata caused herself to be arrayed in a bewildering gown of a pellicular Eastern stuff, much embroidered, and billowing about her feet in the fashion of the moment. She wore her heavy hair in a gold net, and a string of pearls about her throat, exposed to the base. She looked girlish, if not ingenuous, and very lovely.
The Archduchess Maria Leopoldina, Obersthofmeisterin, or Grand Stewardess, of Ranata’s Household, together with one of the ladies-in-waiting, the Lectrice, and Alexandra, disposed themselves just beyond the door of the tea-room as the carriage which had been sent for the minister appeared on the bridge below the palace.