“Long live the Emperor and King!  God save Austria!”

Emperors and kings!  They were as impossible today as a snowstorm.  The grave ambassadors as they appeared at great Washington functions, wearing their decorations, always struck her as being particularly distinguished.  It just now occurred to her that they were all linked to the crown and scepter; but she dismissed the whole matter and bowed to two dark ladies in a passing victoria with the quick little nod and bright smile that were the same for these titled members of the Spanish Ambassador’s household as for the young daughters of a western senator, who democratically waved their hands to her from a doorstep.

Armitage came again to her mind.  He had called at the Claiborne house twice since the Secretary’s ball, and she had been surprised to find how fully she accepted him as an American, now that he was on her own soil.  He derived, too, a certain stability from the fact that the Sandersons knew him; he was, indeed, an entirely different person since the Montana Senator definitely connected him with an American landscape.  She had kept her own counsel touching the scene on the dark deck of the King Edward, but it was not a thing lightly to be forgotten.  She was half angry with herself this mellow afternoon to find how persistently Armitage came into her thoughts, and how the knife-thrust on the steamer deck kept recurring in her mind and quickening her sympathy for a man of whom she knew so little; and she touched her horse impatiently with the crop and rode into the park at a gait that roused the groom to attention.

At a bend of the road Chauvenet and Franzel, the attache, swung into view, mounted, and as they met, Chauvenet turned his horse and rode beside her.

“Ah, these American airs!  This spring!  Is it not good to be alive, Miss Claiborne?”

“It is all of that!” she replied.  It seemed to her that the day had not needed Chauvenet’s praise.

“I had hoped to see you later at the Wallingford tea!” he continued.

“No teas for me on a day like this!  The thought of being indoors is tragic!”

She wished that he would leave her, for she had ridden out into the spring sunshine to be alone.  He somehow did not appear to advantage in his riding-coat,—­his belongings were too perfect.  She had really enjoyed his talk when they had met here and there abroad; but she was in no mood for him now; and she wondered what he had lost by the transfer to America.  He ran on airily in French, speaking of the rush of great and small social affairs that marked the end of the season.

“Poor Franzel is indeed triste.  He is taking the death of Johann Wilhelm quite hard.  But here in America the death of an emperor seems less important.  A king or a peasant, what does it matter!”

“Better ask the robin in yonder budding chestnut tree, Monsieur.  This is not an hour for hard questions!”