“Would you like to walk up and down the road for a change?” asked Fessenden.
“No!” exclaimed Ranata, still short of breath. “I should not.”
“You are not ready for another?”
“No, I am not ready for another!” She spoke with an asperity quite unnatural in a princess who never forgot to be gracious, lest she wound the amour propre of those at her mercy. The tumult within her had soured and fermented into a sudden hatred of the colossal wealth, the constant exercise of a power greater than her father’s, and the habit of republican independence, which enabled this man to stand before her as unconcernedly as if she were a girl of his own class. Her wrath might be unreasonable, but she was in no mood to admit it, and she was divided between a desire to relieve her tension with tears and for power to humiliate the man.
Fessenden, who was too hot and thirsty to be sentimental, much less conscious of outraged royalty that he had been swinging in the Chardash, glanced about longingly. “I think there must be wine in that shed,” he said. “Where there is a crowd after the Chardash there usually is wine; and doubtless the Count has set up a barrel of his own. If you will wait here I’ll fetch you some.”
As he walked away, his white blouse and skirts flapping in the breeze, Ranata sank upon a bench. For the first time in her life she was nonplussed, at a loss what to do. Her long experience with Alexandra did not help her in the least. Not only had she always regarded the American girl as sui generis, but it had been her royal pleasure that she should be so. She suddenly became aware that her friend was standing before her.
“Of course you are angry,” said Miss Abbott contritely. “And I must confess at once that I knew he was here, and might have warned you. But Fessenden is Fessenden, and I knew that he would do what he wanted in spite of me or any one else. Would you rather go at once?”
The Archduchess rose with alacrity. “Yes,” she said, “let us go as quickly as possible.”
XII
Fessenden sat over his coffee on the terrace of his hotel in Pest, and stared up at Buda with little appreciation of its evening beauty. The sunset glow still lingered, pushing forward the dark masses of the Schwabenberg, where brilliant points of light were appearing among the dim outlines of the villas. On the long ridge above the Danube, and the abrupt irregular heights beyond, lights were darting forth rapidly, and one wing of the palace was illuminated. The irregular groups and single dots of fire gave the fissures and cliffs, the ruins of the citadel on its isolated height far to the left, and the beautiful outline of the palace a dark and savage grandeur. On the rough side of the cliff, far below the citadel, was a mass of lights like a meteor fallen upon a void, so dark were the woods and rocks about the little kiosk where men and women drank their iced coffee to the music of the gypsies. Along the ridge on the right of the palace were the melting outlines of public buildings, of ancient churches, the arches of the chapel above the dust of Shêkl Gül Baba, which alone commemorates the century and a half of Turkish occupation, and the modern structures which cover the baths the Romans built two thousand years ago. Down on the riverbank, in the shadow of the precipitous gardens of the palace, the cafés were brilliantly alight, and the music of cymbal and fiddle floated over to Pest and mingled with the strains of the gypsy band in the hotel behind Fessenden.