There we have the dots on the i’s in so far as Mary’s mother is concerned. Mary, for her, was an article of merchandise; and Countess Marie was, for her as for the Empress, a heaven-sent “go-between.” Unfortunately, however, from the mother’s point of view, Mary was not an ideal daughter. It is not impossible, Countess Marie thinks, that she might, in cold blood, have fallen in with her mother’s plans. It is certainly not by considerations of morality, Countess Marie maintains, that she would have been restrained from doing so; for those considerations had already gone by the board in the course of an “affair” with an English cavalry officer in Cairo. But Mary’s blood was, at the moment, anything but cold. She was at once infatuated, and vain, and wilful; and all three emotions—wilfulness, and vanity, and infatuation—had combined to prompt her to the same rash course of action. She had a chance—or, at all events, believed that she had one—of marrying Miguel of Braganza; but she preferred Rudolph. She threw herself at Rudolph’s head, and stuck to him like a leech. Rudolph himself declared that she was not like the others—she could not be shaken off. She had begun by writing to Rudolph, imploring him to see her; and he had plunged into the adventure, as he had plunged into so many previous adventures, with a light heart, not guessing whither it would lead him. She had gone on to insult the Crown Princess—staring her full in the face, and not recognising her presence in a ball-room. Her mother, crimson with anger—for her own social position was obviously imperilled by such behaviour on her daughter’s part—had hurried her off and locked her up in her room; and then Rudolph, hearing what had happened, went to see Countess Marie, and required a service of her: “Listen. I want you to bring Mary to me at the Hofburg.” “I assure you it is necessary for me to see Mary. Besides, I myself am in great danger.” “I must speak to Mary _alone_; it may possibly help me to escape the trouble which threatens me.” Those are the essential sentences; and they strike one as madly inconsequent. For why should a private interview with Mary be necessitated by the fact that Rudolph was “in danger”? How could such an interview help him to escape the trouble which threatened him,—that trouble being, as he went on to explain to Countess Marie, political? Countess Marie does not answer these questions; she writes as if she did not even perceive them to be questions which a sceptical critic of her narrative would inevitably ask. She goes on, instead, to speak of Rudolph’s political troubles, and of the part which he called upon her to play in covering them up: “‘Listen!’ he said. ‘If I were to confide in the Emperor, _I should sign my own death warrant_.’ My heart nearly stopped beating at this dreadful disclosure, and I could say nothing.” [Illustration: THE HOFBURG, VIENNA.]