He drew a sharp but silent breath. He had never seen a woman look more like an angel, and he knew no woman in whom he was so convinced the devil made extended sojourns. He understood for the first time why she had disciplined her spirit to rise triumphant above that breadth of jaw, the grand sweeping lines of her body, above her diabolical hair; for he was too astute to question her integrity on this point. In a flash he understood why she would not marry. But ambition?--and a permanent and ever-widening outlet for that tumultuous spirit, that repressed and violent nature? Was she sincere for the moment? Had he been sure of even that he would not have hesitated to give his cordial endorsement to her plan. But he had persuaded the Emperor that unless they could be positive she meditated no act of usurpation upon the succession of her unpopular cousin, she must not be permitted a liberty with which she might even before that event plunge all Europe into war. The Emperor, who asked no more of life but peace, had told him to go to Budapest, investigate the mind of his problematical daughter, and then act in accordance with what his Majesty believed to be an unfailing judgment. What a tool she might be, his Excellency had thought. She looked like anything but a tool. It suddenly rushed upon his brain that he had never seen a woman who looked so surely born to sit upon a throne. _Why not? Why not?_ And if he were her good friend now, if he, whom she knew to be the arbiter of her destiny, if he were the one to place the sceptre within her reach--who so fitted to serve her hereafter? to rise higher and higher in power?--for this woman would take no puppet consort. Might not Europe welcome such a solution of an agitating problem? Not William, perhaps, nor Russia; but by that time William and Russia might be too occupied with each other to scramble for plums in the Austrian pie. And a young and beautiful empress, with an intelligence capable of assimilating all the statecraft her ministers chose to impart, always of imposing dignity, irreproachable, her heart and soul given to her state and people, her beauty the constant inspiration of the artist, would she not be worshipped by her subjects, and appeal to the interest and chivalry of Europe? If she had the tact to appear nobly indifferent to any such result during the lifetime of her father; if the Hungarians, immediately upon the death of their king, arose as one man and proclaimed her queen, she would tower above reproach or criticism, the most picturesque personality in the world, far more certain of holding the Dual Monarchy together than Maria Theresia with the aid of the Pragmatic Sanction; for to-day the majority of nations wanted peace and the preservation of the Austrian Empire. Franz Ferdinand might attempt a struggle for his rights, but it was more likely that the army of Austria would march to this woman than against her. It well might