Vilma from her high window saw them return. She had watched for them, not from the motive which had made her neighbor walk restlessly between her window and her writing-table, but in tempestuous sympathy with a romance against which she pressed so close. Her own heart she believed to be a graveyard with one tomb, and she found a vicarious happiness in this atmosphere of passionate and uncommon love that she was graciously permitted to enter. She had seen how it was from the first, and had done what she could to divert the attentions and the suspicion of Piroska. Pumping had had no effect on the wary Zápolya, and Vilma, with all her subtlety, was still in doubt as to what the possible enemy may have seen or suspected. She had followed Fessenden and Ranata on the night of the ball, and waited without the door leading to the private apartments until she heard him returning; that she might be able to assure Piroska she had been their companion and chaperon. But Piroska had given no sign that she had been occupied during that brilliant night except with her many partners, and Vilma dared not tell Ranata what she had done. Gracious and captivating as the Princess was in her new rôle, it would have been a braver than Vilma who would have taken a liberty with her. Fessenden possessed no great charm for this young Hungarian, who preferred a more romantic type, but if he had inspired love in her beautiful princess she wished with all her heart that he too were of the blood of kings. Had these two been content with intrigue she would willingly have helped and shielded them, but she shrewdly suspected the truth. Astounding as the fact might be, the American wished to marry the daughter of an emperor and king. It took the ancient pattern of her brain a long while to adjust itself to the bare idea, but when time had accustomed her to its audacity she could, starved soul that she was, but sympathize. She too had had an intuition of Ranata’s state of mind when she bloomed upon them at dinner that night, breathing passion and defiance, and she heartily wished the Princess had slipped out of the castle with her lover instead of giving her word to the Obersthofmeisterin to return.