“You must not make this too hard for me. I owe you so much——”
“Say nothing of that, please, or you will silence me altogether, Mademoiselle,” I interposed, quickly.
“Do you forget what I told you—there would be no Mademoiselle in Belgrade. I am the Princess Gatrina, betrothed to Prince Albrevics, next in succession to the Servian throne.”
I tried to take it with a smile as I had before taken the news of her betrothal; but I could not. I could not even find a word to reply. I just sat staring out in front of me yet seeing nothing. I was like a man stricken dumb by a sudden calamity—helpless, numbed and beaten.
I must have turned deathly white, for all the blood in my body seemed to have rushed to my heart which beat with great lurching thumps against my ribs and shook my whole body. Then my head where I had been struck began to throb in response to the wild hammer of the pulse, and I grew dizzy and faint. My breath came with difficulty and I had to grip the tree with strenuous hands lest I should fall from it.
“It was this I asked Father Michel to tell you,” she said presently.
I heard her, of course; but her voice sounded far away and apart from me. Much as though the barrier between us had become substantial and she were speaking from far on the other side of it.
At length I managed to get to my feet and to pace up and down, winning the fight against my reeling senses and gathering up the fragments of my scattered resolution. The first sign of my victory was a feeling of blind, bitter anger with myself for having shewn such weakness before her.
“You must not judge me by this exhibition,” I said, as a sort of apology. “My head pained me for a moment. That’s all; I’m better now again.”
But her pitying eyes shewed that she understood.