Lothair had appropriated to the Campians one of the most convenient and complete apartments in the castle. It consisted of four chambers, one of them a saloon which had been fitted up for his mother when she married; a pretty saloon, hung with pale-green silk, and portraits and scenes inlaid by Vanloo and Boucher. It was rather late in the afternoon when Lothair received a message from Theodora in reply to the wish that he had expressed of seeing her.
When he entered the room, she was not seated; her countenance was serious. She advanced, and thanked him for wishing to see her, and regretted she could not receive him at an earlier hour. “I fear it may have inconvenienced you,” she added; “but my mind has been much disturbed, and too agitated for conversation.”
“Even now I may be an intruder?”
“No, it is past; on the contrary, I wish to speak to you; indeed, you are the only person with whom I could speak,” and she sat down.
Her countenance, which was unusually pale when he entered, became flushed. “It is not a subject for the festive hour of your life,” she said, “but I cannot resist my fate.”
“Your fate must always interest me,” murmured Lothair.
“Yes; but my fate is the fate of ages and of nations,” said Theodora, throwing up her head with that tumult of the brow which he had once before noticed. “Amid the tortures of my spirit at this moment, not the least is that there is only one person I can appeal to, and he is one to whom I have no right to make that appeal.”
“If I be that person,” said Lothair, “you have every right, for I am devoted to you.”
“Yes; but it is not personal devotion that is the qualification needed. It is not sympathy with me that would authorize such an appeal. It must be sympathy with a cause, and a cause for which, I fear, you do not—perhaps I should say you cannot—feel.”
“Why?” said Lothair.