We can. It was assumed by Countess Marie’s reviewers, when her book appeared, that her story connecting John Orth’s departure with the Meyerling tragedy was, whether true or not, at all events quite new. But that assumption was erroneous. Countess Marie was only putting the dots on the i’s—whether she put the right dots on the right i’s or not—of a contemporaneous rumour. One may find the rumour in a work entitled _The Private Life of Two Emperors—William II. of Germany and Francis Joseph of Austria_—published in the United States, nine years ago, and written, as the publisher’s note states, as far back at 1899. It possesses no sort of authority; one dares not go to it for “inside information”; but it does reflect—for what it is worth—the gossip of the hour. This is what the writer says:— “There is, it may be added also, a story as to the Archduke’s disappearance which I have never yet seen in print. It connects his exile and his disappearance from the ranks of the members of the Imperial family of Austria with the tragedy of Meyerling and the death of Crown Prince Rudolph. It is difficult to account for the origin thereof, except for the fact which I have just mentioned that the two Archdukes had already once quarrelled, and had been prevented from fighting a duel only by the intervention of the Emperor. There could, therefore, be no longer any love lost between them. Moreover, Archduke Rudolph died at Meyerling in the early part of 1889; Archduke John left Austria and relinquished his military and imperial dignities during that same year, after having been suspended from his divisional command just about the time of the tragedy at Meyerling.” What is important here is the rumour itself; the inferences drawn from it by the writer do not matter. The suggestion that John Orth was directly concerned with Rudolph’s death is obviously no more than a conjectural explanation of the rumour. How, people were evidently asking themselves, could John Orth’s departure be associated with Rudolph’s death except on the assumption that he had done, or procured, a deed of violence? Countess Marie’s story at least accounts for the association without invoking that hypothesis; and it also accounts for the quarrel between the two Archdukes. It was a quarrel, according to her, between conspirators—the one eager to press forward, and the other frightened into wishing to hang back; and though one gathers from one page of Countess Marie’s book that the secret of the conspiracy was locked up in the steel casket, one reads on another page that the Ministers had an inkling of it. That fact transpires in her account of her interview with Count Julius Andrassy: “Count Andrassy” (she writes) “said plainly that something beyond a love drama was responsible for the tragedy; the Archduke John corroborated this statement, and the affair of the steel box makes me absolutely certain of it.”