In these first hours she was too hard for lovers’ regrets, so wroth was she at the insult put upon her individuality, and so great her astonishment that with all the intellect and character of which she had vaunted herself she was as helpless to move in behalf of her own destiny, as poor in resource, in these primitive circumstances to which her father and sovereign had reduced her, as any little fool of the Middle Ages. Although she had been warned by her opportunities of close observation against the devouring and repulsive selfishness of those who pushed the _culte du moi_ to its modern limits, yet few women had so proudly developed their individuality, few had so jealously insisted upon the right of the brain to its own thoughts, of the character to develop in its own way and as far as human limitations would permit. If she had until her visit to Hungary been submissive to the laws of her position it had been because she had deliberately chosen submission, and aloofness, as her part, as her highest duties to her house; not because she stood in the slightest awe of her father, or recognized his right to direct her thoughts and conduct. It is doubtful if she could have loved Fessenden Abbott had she not recognized in him a spirit as free as her own, and an enlightenment and a sympathetic understanding which would never seek to change nor control her. She had found a mate, not a master, and both being the extreme products of their century, their prospects of a lifelong desire for partnership exceeded those in the great restless sea of awakened intelligence between the highest type and the commonplace. Ranata, in more passionate hours of longing and anguish, had felt the possibilities she relinquished, rather than grasped them with her reason, but now she knew their full significance, and the knowledge helped her to deeper indignation of the mediæval conditions into which she had abruptly been thrust.