“I am a woman and inconsistent.”
“I know less about women than you do, so I can’t help you out—at all events unless you tell me what is the matter with you.”
“Alexandra is direct, but she has a great deal of subtlety!”
“I haven’t a particle of subtlety. I’ll give a direct answer to a direct question from anybody but a South American president or a Chinaman. What is it?”
“I don’t think I’ll tell you,” said Ranata hurriedly. “How I long to hear all your adventures at first hand! Even listening to Alexandra, I have held my breath. But we are going to have our coffee on the terrace.”
A few moments later, as the company was standing about the pillared gallery behind the vines, the Princess Sarolta took Alexandra’s arm and strolled with her beyond the others.
“Why are you angry?” asked the watchful Obersthofmeisterin.
“Ranata is trying to make a fool of my brother.”
“You are making a fool of Zrinyi. Your brother has doubtless been made a fool of before. I was afraid that Ranata was taking man—in the person of your brother—as seriously as she has taken all life heretofore.”
Alexandra was on the alert at once. “You are quite mistaken,” she said indifferently. “Ranata has a very particular reason for turning my brother’s head. I promised, in a moment of enthusiasm, to help her. I do not know that that would hold, but I am in a quandary. I want Ranata to succeed in all that she has undertaken, but I do not want my brother sacrificed.”