“What are you going to do about it?” asked Ranata--unconsciously, in her quick suspicion, using the American vernacular, although her language was German; her father had never found it necessary to learn English. This time the Emperor met her eye fully, although his heart quaked. “I have determined that it is time for you to marry,” he said in a louder tone than he was sensible of in time. Ranata laughed. She was surprised at her rudeness. The disrespectful ebullition was due partly to nervousness; but the Emperor’s brave announcement had also struck at the quick of her humor. His Majesty’s ruddy face deepened in hue, but he had too difficult a task to accomplish to permit himself the luxury of a personal sensation. He had steeled his heart against pity; to give himself up to anger was unworthy, and he brushed the emotion aside. He would have been glad to see his daughter happy, but the stoicism of lonely majesty had been immutably set in his case by the many and agonizing personal experiences which he had weathered into a healthy and tolerable old age. Princes were born to earthly martyrdom tempered by much casual consolation. If their women were forced to play their part without the compensations, that was the decree of God, who made kings, and they must suffer and make no complaint. As a rule they did, and it was the manifest duty of him who was divinely permitted to govern to see that they found no opportunity to do otherwise. “You are overwrought, I fear,” he said tactfully. “Did you sleep well after your pilgrimage?” “Perfectly. May I ask whom your Majesty has considered as a son-in-law?” The Emperor made a slight motion that in a person of less graceful dignity might have been mistaken for a squirm. He had no doubt of the wisdom of his choice--his own choice he believed it to be--for his relative, if stern and unbending, a disciplinarian of the first rank, was neither brutal nor cruel, nor, if met with a discreet submission, unamiable. The idea of handing over his potential daughter to this Gibraltar among husbands, who had responded with enthusiasm to the invitation to marry a beautiful and wealthy princess, had taken full possession of the apprehensive mind of the old monarch; but he had not planned to break the name until after the right amount of preparation. He had anticipated that Ranata would dissolve into tears and perhaps more tempestuous emotions, under cover of which he could retreat, to communicate in writing the fulness of her fate. But there was no sign of a tear in the large angry eyes transfixing him, and her full fine mouth, with its short upper lip and unsatisfied corners, looked as if a sob had never shaken it. “Well?” she asked. There was nothing for it but to plump out the name. Even were he willing to gain time by asserting that the man had not yet been chosen, he knew that she would detect the lie and place him at an immediate disadvantage. He answered stolidly, “Aloys Franz--”