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Amelia, Duchess of Schönbuchel, had been twice widowed and reached the age of seventy without finding life at all unpleasant; she continued to feel her own affairs very satisfactory, and those of others very diverting. There were many varieties of lunacy in her family, but she herself was extremely sane; she knew her confused pedigree and her hundreds of relations by heart, and could have recited, without pausing for breath, their multitudinous quarterings; for the rest, she did not trouble about them much. She had lately retired to Schönbuchel, at Dürsheim on the Danube, and there flourished in a comfortable solitude that she easily filled with small, but exciting, interests.

Here she occasionally endured the company of her second cousin, the Prince of Anhalt-Dessau, for the sake of that of his daughter, of whom she was exceedingly fond and in whose future she was sincerely interested.

She thought that the girl had been harshly brought up, and was altogether too dutiful, poor motherless creature, to her tiresome pedantic father, who tyrannized without stint over his only child. Eleanora endured his harshness with dutiful affection; she had an extremely sweet disposition.

From her cradle she had been a matrimonial prize, and the fit disposition of her hand had been a constant preoccupation with her father, who finally, after much debate, had leaned to Leopold of Bavaria when that prince's career had seemed more successful; since then, however, Prince Christian had come forward, with very definite advantages, and Leopold had suffered considerable reverses; so Anhalt-Dessau hesitated; he was a bigoted Protestant, and had been immensely moved in favour of Christian by his ready renunciation of Catholicism, whereas to achieve the Imperial diadem his daughter would have to leave her hereditary faith.

The Duchess of Schönbuchel watched all these manoeuvres with zest; when she had a favourable opinion on them she was silent, but she gave her cousin the benefit of all her adverse criticism; he was not, therefore, very ready to stay at Dürsheim, but found it temptingly convenient to Vienna and Ottenheim.

War or peace seemed to make little difference to the revenues of the Duchess; the expectations of her heirs might be pinched but her expenses were not; she contrived to keep up all the state to which she had always been accustomed.

She had a passion for clothes and pet animals, and was very popular with her dependents, for she liked to see her inferiors enjoying themselves as long as they did their duties, and these they were very ready to discharge in the service of such a good-natured mistress.

She was, at present, a rigid prude, more from the advantage such an attitude gave her in censuring others than from any deep conviction, but she enjoyed a scandalous story in the right company (that of virtuous matrons) and was supposed to have afforded the theme for several such herself in the days of her active youth; she was able, however, to despise such rumours by a reflection on the lack of human charity which she had always found so conspicuous and at which she could scarcely wonder, for she admitted that to think the worst was generally to hit the truth.

All such cynical maxims, however, she kept from Eleanora, in whom she tried to inculcate those lefty ideals which she had always felt so dubious about herself.

Eleanora cared nothing about cynicism or ideals; she lived cheerfully from day to day, doing her lessons, reading her homilies, running about the house peeping into this and that, playing a little and dreaming a little; she was seventeen and had not a care in the world; she liked very much to come to Schönbuchel, the castle on the rocks overhanging the Danube opposite a small island so dark and lovely that it was surely inhabited by fairies, and ringed round by beautiful hills that had an air of enchantment; she liked also to hear the stories of the Danube, the legends of Kriemhild and Siegfried, of knights and dragons and magic.

The Duchess did not encourage this taste; she knew the age to be practical and material, and no period for one whose head was filled with fairy tales.

Eleanora's father was also severely set against this romantic tendency, but for another reason; his strict Lutheranism thought such literature corrupting. Enervating tales of passion, crime and folly, he said, should have no place in the education of a Christian maiden.

"Bah!" cried the Duchess, when she heard him say this; and promptly became a party to smuggled books in her private chambers. "The child can't always be reading sermons," she said, glancing across at Eleanora in the window seat with a great volume found in the old library, and her keen old face, withered, sharpened and bleached, softened into a look of love.

Eleanora, in her deep absorption, appeared indeed a child; she was small, and her limbs very curved and delicate; in a catalogue of charms hers had not appeared so notable, but there was in her air, her movement, her gesture, her look, like a perfume, like a melody, some indefinable and potent fascination. Her grace and fragrance were not to be explained; there was something touching about her innocent liveliness, something moving about her delicious gaiety. She wore now a cambric dress and a sarcenet sash of saffron colour, while in the waves of her pale soft hair she had placed a knot of silvered ribbon given her by the Duchess, who delighted in making her these frivolous little gifts.

"What are you reading of?" asked the Duchess.

Eleanora glanced up, smiling; she could not say, the images in the old book moved in a confused impression across her mind, rich, brilliant and nameless.

"You must not stoop over books too much," added the old woman, "you will grow round-shouldered and you must not always have sweets in your pocket or you will spoil your teeth."

"How you look after me," smiled Eleanora, stretching like a little cat. "The sweets are only for when I do my Latin and Divinity. It helps me, when the words are hard, to have something pleasant to taste—" But she dutifully untied the silk bag at her waist and tossed it to the Duchess.

"Why don't you go out now, Eleanora, with Charlotte and take a walk in the woods? You might find some strawberries."

"It is too hot."

The day was indeed warm; a golden haze lay over the valley, the azure sky shimmered with heat; the Danube blazed in the sun; but in this. chamber it was cool with dark green male fleurs tapestry, and long mirrors that held shadows like water. There were two green parrots in ebony rings, white dogs in baskets, and a monkey asleep by a dish of fruit.

The Duchess, most comfortably disposed on a large sofa, was embroidering a chair back with her very complicated quarterings. She wore an old-fashioned robe of stiff brocade and a great deal of jewellery; hard, sparkling, heavily set.

"Have you seen Prince Christian?" she asked suddenly.

"I saw him on the terrace below this morning, walking with father," replied the girl indifferently.

"Do you think him at all like your Siegfried?" demanded the Duchess.

"Oh, no! Siegfried was fair."

"Well, he is a very handsome man. Don't you like him?"

"I have not seen much of him," said Eleanora, from whom all her matrimonial prospects had been carefully kept. "No, I don't think I do like him; he is overbearing, and stares so. He never says anything to me but 'good day,' and yet he makes me feel little and silly. Why do you ask him here. Aunt Amelia?"

"Your father wants to see him, about some of those dull affairs men get interested in—he is a great soldier, you know."

"Yes," replied the girl, who saw no enchantment in her own times, "but that isn't what it used to be, is it?"

"He certainly isn't a knight errant, if that is what you mean." The Duchess could hardly forbear a smile. "But he must be very interesting to talk to. I should like to have a conversation with him, I must say."

Eleanora did not answer; Christian hardly touched her little enclosed world; she had grown up in the midst of wars and confusions of politics, knowing nothing of either.

"I daresay we shall dine with him to-night," continued the Duchess. "And you shall wear that new pink dress with the sapphires—"

"Oh, can I? It is so pretty—"

"But skimped. The man cabbaged some of the stuff. But Charlotte will set it out very well, no doubt."

"I don't want to go down to dinner," said Eleanora, to whom these formal meals were periods of dull restraint and long conversations about subjects that she did not understand.

"No—it is usually very tedious, and your father so disagreeable. However, I suppose we must go, or it would seem a slight to Prince Christian."

"Who is he?" asked Eleanora idly.

The Duchess, who was usually so ready with every one's genealogy, was rather confused by this childish question.

"He is a Prince of Kurland," she answered, "and in all these ridiculous wars he has lost his kingdom."

"Why doesn't the Emperor give it back to him?"

"Because he is in trouble himself. It is all more than you or I will ever understand," said the Duchess briefly. "What you will have to be concerning yourself about," she added, "is your settlement in life—your father expects to see you married soon, so don't be dreaming too much of beautiful knights with yellow hair, for there are no longer any such creatures."

"As if I did!" laughed Eleanora. "And father says that I'm not to be married yet nor need think of it—"

The old woman gazed at her with furtive tenderness; she did not wish the girl soon married, for that would mean that she would lose the brightest and sweetest of her companions and she felt a yearning over the childish happiness so soon to be exchanged for a state by no means certain to be happy but sure to be full of care and trouble; to be the wife of any German prince would not, these tumultuous times, be too easy.

She was glad that Eleanora was indifferent to Christian, for in her heart she leant towards the Imperial match; though she had a shrewd knowledge of the value of these high-sounding honours, she could not resist the desire to see them worn by her favourite.

While the old woman and the girl were both drowsily silent, in the heat of the day, one with her needle, the other with her book, the door opened brusquely and the Prince of Anhalt-Dessau entered. Eleanora rose in a fright and could scarce make a reverence in her hurry to throw her frilled skirts over the forbidden book.

Even though she was successful in this she did not escape censure.

"What have you got in your hair, child?" asked her father sternly.

"A knot of ribbon that I gave her, Frederic," said the Duchess, while Eleanora pulled the offending string from her curls.

"Keep such adornments till you are out of tutelage," remarked the Prince, and taking the gaudy knot threw it out of the open window. "You, Madam, are too fond of making her a peacock and a popinjay."

"Frederic," said the Duchess acidly, "your temper and your manners are atrocious—you have no business to burst in like this—"

"I was too well aware that Eleanora was idling here. Herr Pfiffer is looking for her, for her music."

Eleanora rose dutifully, contrived to cast a cushion over the book of legends, and ran out after two deep curtsies to her elders.

"You will make the girl a sickly bas bleu," remarked the duchess, "with your pedants and tutors. Cannot you come here for a week or two without bringing these creatures with you?"

"If she does not occupy her mind with study it will be with worse things," replied the Prince. "She is inclined to dream and idle and you encourage her."

He was a small, lean, fair, faded man, with a dry, pompous manner of fussy self-importance; he was now secretly elated, for he had just received Leopold and Hensdorff, a visit which he considered very flattering. He did not intend to confide to the Duchess, who had never seen Leopold, the identity of the young guest; far less to his daughter; and he found the possession of this important secret very agreeable.

Walking up and down the room he began talking, rather at random, to hide his excitement. He had a harsh voice that made the parrots restless and started the dogs growling and snapping as he passed their baskets.

The Duchess, yawning, pulled him up.

"Have you given Prince Christian his dismissal?"

"No—but I shall. He was most insistent and high-handed, though I must say he offered the handsomest settlements and asks no dowry."

"Why?"

"Well, of course one can see why—he is anxious to connect himself with our family to cover up his own birth—and that's what sticks with me—"

"A man like that, though, it hardly matters."

"Oh, doesn't it? Besides, I dislike him."

"Eleanora is for the Emperor, then?" asked the Duchess, with a little pang for the heavy uncertainties that Imperial destiny involved.

"Yes, I think so; yes, really I think so—his cause looks very good—and if he were really established—well, one could hardly ask for a better match, eh?"

The Duchess secretly agreed, but could not resist pointing out the weak spot in the arrangement.

"She will have to leave the Lutheran Church."

"Well," replied the Prince, pettishly, "we will see about that—perhaps not, and anyhow we shall be able to wring large concessions for the Protestants from Hensdorff. It will give us all a great deal of influence in affairs."

And he proceeded to tell of the visit of Count Hensdorff with a young Bavarian officer, who had been urging him, in the most flattering manner, to conclude the alliance.

"Rather difficult having him here at the same time with Prince Christian, eh?"

"No—they seem on good terms. I should say that they have concluded some bargain, and, of course, if Christian takes up the Emperor's side again that will give him a tremendous chance—"

"But will he," asked the old lady, shrewdly, "if Leopold gets Eleanora? Is not that likely to send him over to the Allies in a rage?"

"Nonsense. He is a man of sense—there are many other princes who would gladly give him their daughters, as I must say I would have done myself if this other offer had not been so tempting."

He smiled cunningly to himself and added:

"Let Eleanora come down to dinner to-night, and set her out in the finery you are both so fond of. I want Hensdorff to take a good report to Vienna."

While these two people were discussing her immediate future, Eleanora was seated in a lower room, practising with a wizened music master, for whom she had little taste; she had no thought in her head but the heat of the afternoon, and how delicious it would be, when her task was over, to coax old Charlotte to take her into the cool, dark, green, still woods.