The girls, who had stepped out on the balcony in the broad light of afternoon, ignoring the protests of Maria Leopoldina, who, rather than carry the mausoleum of her charms into the sunshine, had retired in dudgeon, were dressed for a great banquet to be given at five o’clock to the guest of the King of Hungary, the German Emperor. The Archduchess, who, with some reason, had come to the conclusion that life with her was to be a sequence of weeds, interrupted by intervals of uncertain duration, varied her black with white only. Nevertheless, she was one of the best-dressed women in Europe, and only her patient tire-women knew the infinite range of her wardrobe. “I often sigh for color,” she confided once to her American friend, “but I am too superstitious to venture. And perhaps it is as well. My rôle is the princess of the antique, the traditional pattern. In white I look ready for a memorial window or a bas-relief in the Augustin.” To which Alexandra had replied practically, “To say nothing of the fact that it makes your own coloring twice as strong as it would be above a brilliant plumage.” Certainly the gown of white velvet embroidered with pearls and silver which she wore to-day in honor of her enemy enhanced her statuesque appearance, and gave her sharp black brows, the scarlet of her lips, and the brilliant masses of her hair an insolent effect of being able to supply all the color that a dazzled beholder could endure. The almost fierce incongruousness of her coloring might have defeated her attempt to convince the world that a mere princess dwelt within that virile shell, had it not been for the cold regularity of an Egyptian profile carried loftily above a form of antique height and mould, and a skin so white that despairing man had vowed there was sacrilege in the thought of its being put to mortal use. Her gray eyes were alert and so expressive that she had formed the habit of holding them half closed, and her black lashes were very thick. She had inherited her hands and feet from her Spanish ancestors; while not out of proportion to her great height, they were so finely fashioned that they looked too small for serious work. Her trick of eyebrow and shoulder, when animated, may have indicated the persistence of the French blood brought in by Francis of Lorraine. Nature, unspiteful for once to royal women, had given her the infrequent best of her ancestors, and even modified the not unpleasing nose that Elizabeth of Brunswick had presented to the Hapsburgs. Ranata had immense strength, had been ill but once in her life, hardly ever had experienced the sensation of utter fatigue. Her horsemanship was as remarkable as her mother’s had been; and when she appeared in the Prater beside the equally accomplished Emperor, it was a sight that no man ever forgot. She broke in her own horses; when in the country, frequently groomed and saddled them. After Alexandra, they were her only intimates, and she had known