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. On the long line of terrace before the hotels of Pest, hundreds sat at little tables smoking and drinking their coffee. On the wide promenade in front many more sauntered, the women gayly and fashionably dressed, many of them beautiful, animated--bewitching, no doubt, to the fine-looking men who accompanied them. Fessenden had a fervent admiration for the women of Hungary, and he had sat at this same table during former visits and observed them with pleasure. But to-night his eyes rarely wandered from the balcony at the southeast extremity of the palace, where several figures were discernible, and the regular rising, lingering, disappearing of what might have been the travail of a miniature volcano. The volcano, doubtless, was the Princess Sarolta of Windischgrätz, for the figures had moved from time to time, and there appeared to be no man among them. Once the tallest of the group had entered the room at the corner and stood for a moment against the light. Fessenden, his heart beating faster, had fancied he recognized the Archduchess, and had half risen in angry determination to cross the river and storm the hill, but had thrown himself back in his chair and ordered another glass of iced coffee.