On the following Thursday Ranata was not surprised to receive a note from her father asking her to grant an audience to his minister Count von Königsegg, who went to Budapest for the purpose. “Now for it!” exclaimed Alexandra. “Of course he’s brought a corkscrew. Are your brain-cells hermetically sealed?” “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