“I will not affect to misunderstand you,” she answered readily, with mounting colour. “Our interview yesterday makes that unnecessary. That, as I read it, is the real reason at the bottom of this last act of yours. I gave my word then to marry the Duke Sergius, and I would have kept it at all hazards. But I did not mean, and will not suffer, that my marriage with the Duke should be the death-sentence upon Count Benderoff.”
“You ‘would have kept’ your word. Do you mean——?” He paused; and how I hung upon her reply may be imagined.
“I mean that, as the Duke has involved himself in a quarrel, and been seriously wounded for his pains, I cannot well become his wife the day after to-morrow.”
“There must be no delay,” he retorted quickly.
“Delay!” she cried, her eyes flashing again brilliantly. “Do you think if you had murdered my friend here, or if you dared to thrust him into a prison, that I would ever make a marriage that at the best must be hateful to me?”
“This friendship of yours threatens to be exceedingly inconvenient; and if you mean to allow it to interfere with urgent matters of State, we may as well abandon all our plans, or look for some other means of carrying them out.”
“If a policy of murder is your only alternative, I agree with you,” she exclaimed, taking up his challenge instantly. “I will not have the steps of my throne running with blood shed by Russia.”
He bit his lip in chagrin and manifest embarrassment.
He might well be embarrassed. He had fired his two big guns—a threat first to withdraw from her cause and then to throw her over—and had found them both burst at the breech. A long pause followed, in which I watched his face closely. He appeared to come suddenly to a fresh decision, and changed his manner accordingly.
“Well, I am sorry to have distressed you, Princess. What is it you wish?”