Her travelling-companion was scarcely well calculated to smooth down the difficulties of this conflict in her mind. Madame de Heidendorf was the very reverse of Lady Hester. Without the slightest pretension to good looks herself, she assumed to despise everything like beauty in others, constantly associating its possession with the vanity of weak intellects; she threw a kind of ridicule over these “poor, pretty things,” as she loved to call them, which actually seemed to make beauty and folly convertible terms. Political intrigue, or, to speak more fairly, mischief-making in state affairs, was her great and only passion. By dint of time, patience, considerable cunning, and a very keen insight into character, she had succeeded in obtaining the intimacy of many of the first statesmen of Europe. Many had trusted her with the conduct of little matters which the dignity of diplomacy could not stoop to. She had negotiated several little transactions, opened the way to reconciliations, smoothed the road to briberies, and allayed the petty qualms of struggling morality, where any other than a feminine influence would have been coarse and indelicate. As a good monarchist, she was always well received at the Austrian Court, and in St. Petersburg was accustomed to be treated with peculiar honor. By what amount of compensation, or in what shape administered, Midchekoff had secured her present services, this true history is unable to record; but that Kate was eminently fortunate, drawing such a prize in the lottery of life as to enter the world under _her_ auspices, were facts that she dwelt upon without ceasing.