Page:Robert Barr - Lord Stranleigh Philanthropist.djvu/299

 its pages until he reached the place he was in search of, he murmured aloud some information. The Baroness was twenty-four years old; one of her estates lay in the vicinity of Vienna. The summer baronial hall of the family was built in the sixteenth century in picturesque Tyrol, and was entitled Schloss Arrenfels. Large acreage of wild lands in Transylvania. The Arrenfels Palace in Vienna was a modern building.

There you are, Lord Stranleigh. What answer is the lady to receive through her Ambassador?"

"Hand me the Ambassador's letter, please."

The young man scanned it.

"There seems to me something strange about this method of introduction," he mused.

"Not at all!" cried Blake. "The Austrians are a very etiquette-loving people—stiffest and most formal Court in Europe, I should say—therefore the lady does the proper and ponderous thing. She sets her Government in motion, and proceeds under its auspices, thus eliminating all letters of introduction, and rendering unnecessary any further credentials."

"Yes, yes; that is true enough, yet somehow instinctively, I feel a certain distrust of this proposal."