“There is nothing to do next, or after,” he said, in the same moody tone. “When such a woman holds the future of our scheme in her hands we can do nothing but prepare for the worst, and look out for the best means of escape. It will soon be a case of sauve qui peut.”
“I shall fight on till it comes, then, and so will you, my friend, when this mood has passed.” I took him into my private room and, putting wine and cigars before him, set to work to try and shape a course to suit the altered aspect of affairs.
My own opinion was not much brighter than his; but I sought to persuade him, and myself too, that matters might yet be mended. There was one possible door of hope. The Countess meant to have her revenge, and, as she had frankly said, we must base all our plans on her implacable enmity. But she had other ends than those of mere personal vengeance. She hated Christina bitterly, but she loved the Russians no better. Her aim was to keep her Prince on the throne, and to betray us at once would certainly injure him by forcing General Kolfort to act immediately, not only against us, but against the Prince. The latter would be frightened and jockeyed out of the throne, to make room, not for Christina, but for some more pliable tool; and the Countess was quite shrewd enough to foresee that.
“I am inclined to believe,” I said, after we had discussed the position at great length, “that she will seek her ends first by other means than by betraying us to Kolfort—some scheme or other against the Princess or myself personally, perhaps; but something which may take time to work out. She will cling to the hope of retaining the Prince on the throne to the last possible moment; and she may reckon, as she has done hitherto, that by removing the Princess the Russian scheme will be so maimed that the Prince may be able to retrieve and retain his position—at all events for a time. She may now include me in some such plan of assassination. The question for us to consider is, then, how soon we can complete our arrangements, by hurrying them forward at fever heat, so as to make us indifferent to what Kolfort can do.”
I continued to urge this from every standpoint, until I saw with great satisfaction that Zoiloff’s enthusiasm began to heat again. But suddenly his face clouded, and he said:
“Are you forgetting the strange story she is going to tell about yourself and the Princess? I know nothing of it, of course,” he added, as though in assurance of his faith in me. “But if such a tale should reach old Kolfort—and she seemed mad enough to scream it from the housetops—you can judge what he may think.”
“There is a ready answer to it,” I returned, gloomy now in my turn at the thought behind my words.
“You mean denial. I don’t like to speak of this, Count.”
“I do not mean denial only in words. They count for little enough in a time like this,” I replied bitterly.
“What then?”