The Archduchess Maria Leopoldina, a member of a younger branch of the House of Hapsburg, who had succeeded the scrupulous but too obsequious English governess, had been selected, after much anxious thought on the part of the Emperor, consultation with his ministers, and with his old friend the Princess Sarolta of Windischgrätz, as especially fit for her delicate post. The Empress’s prolonged absences from court, as well as the inevitable suspicions engendered by her increasing repugnance for contact with common mortals, made it doubly imperative to give the headstrong young Archduchess a duenna who would, by precept and example, educate her conspicuous charge in the great responsibilities of her position and curb any bent to eccentricity. Maria Leopoldina, a conscientious woman of masterful temperament but considerable tact, had done her work well, and took to herself the credit of much that had been evolved by the thoughtful mind of Ranata herself. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that her early lectures, delivered to an impatient but imaginative young princess, had sown seeds which might have floated longer with a more pliable guardian. For several years she insisted upon the observation of the very letter of her great authority; no friend could Ranata make without her approval, no acquaintance talk with for five minutes alone. The Archduchess had never appeared in the streets of Vienna without her, but in the country, particularly on Ranata’s personal estate on the wildest part of the Danube in Upper Austria, where they were as secluded as soldiers in a border fortress, she wisely allowed her charge a good deal of liberty; and as the years went on she relaxed by imperceptible degrees the rigor of her sovereignty; she left the girl more and more to herself, merely asserting her authority at discreet intervals, that the rebellious nature confided to her should not experience the temptations of freedom. She knew that if she had failed to win her august kinswoman’s heart she had her respect and gratitude; for not only had she early suggested to Ranata the benefit she could confer upon her house by playing the rôle of the lofty and immaculate princess, devoid of common weakness, inaccessible to common temptations, but she had inculcated the great art of self-command, and in the depths of this profoundly accepted lesson Ranata had discovered the strength to endure her life, accept her colorless future, and dominate her nature by her intellect.