“They have ordered me to take your life!”
I am not a man who is easily surprised.
The adventures I have passed through, some of them far more extraordinary than anything I have recorded in my public revelations, have accustomed me to meet almost any situation with diplomatic presence of mind.
But on this occasion I am obliged to admit that I was fairly taken aback.
As the lovely but dangerous woman whom I had cause to regard as the most formidable instrument in the hands of the conspirators, avowed to my face that she had been charged with the mission to assassinate me, I sprang from my chair and confronted her.
She stood, swaying slightly, as though the intensity of her emotion was about to overpower her.
“Do you mean what you say? Do you know what you have said?” I demanded.
The Princess Y—— made no answer, but she lifted her violet eyes to mine, and I saw the big tears welling up and beginning to overflow.
I was dismayed. My strength of mind seemed to desert me. I have looked on without a tear when men have fallen dead at my feet, but I have never been able to remain calm before a woman in tears.