Ingomede the Beautiful

A light, chilling drizzle had been falling all evening, pattering softly upon the roof of leaves that covered the sidewalks along Castle Avenue, glistening on the lamp-lit pavements and blowing ever so gently in the faces of those who walked in the dripping shades. Far back from the shimmering sidewalks, surrounded by the blackest of shadows, and approached by hedge-bordered paths and driveways, stood the mansions occupied by the nobility of this gay little kingdom. A score or more of ancient palaces, in which the spirit, of modern aggression had wrought interior changes but had left the exteriors untouched, formed this aristocratic line of homes. Here were houses that had been built in the fifteenth century,--great, square, solemn-looking structures, grown grey and green with age.

There were lights in a thousand windows along this misty, royal road--lights that reflected the pleasures of the rich and yet caused no envy in time hearts of the loyal poor.

Almost in the centre of the imposing line stood the home of the Duke of Perse, Minister of Finance, flanked on either side by structures as grim and as gay as itself, yet far less significant in their generation. Here dwelt the most important man in the principality, not excepting the devoted prime minister himself. Not that Perse was so well beloved, but that he held the destinies of the land in Midas-like fingers. More than that, he was the father of the far-famed Countess Marlanx, the most glorious beauty at the Austrian and Russian courts. She had gone forth from Graustark as its most notable bride since the wedding day of the Princess Yetive, late in the nineties. Ingomede, the beautiful, had journeyed far to the hymeneal altar; the husband who claimed her was a hated, dishonoured man in his own land. They were married in Buda Pesth. All Europe pitied her at the time; there was but one form of prophecy as to her future. There were those who went so far as to say that her father had delivered her into the hands of a latter-day Bluebeard, who whisked her off into the highlands many leagues from Vienna.