"Then I will try to remember, sire, because the truth is always much the best to know. And I am certain you would not ask me to hurt him. He asked me if I would be ready to go with him when the regency ended and you sent him from court. He said that you had never trusted him, and could not forgive him for the government forced upon him. That was all, indeed. Except that he did say you thought highly of Baron Dalmorov; and, and, a few words just for me."
Adrian passed his hand across his eyes as if to push back the hair from his forehead, and remained silent for a few seconds.
"If Feodor is not happy, he pays the penalty of having ruled," he returned, his strange unyouthful bitterness most repellant. "I am not happy, nor was my father, nor his father before him. And you would leave me to go with him, cousine? Think of it again. I offer you your household in the capital; until some day I marry, you will be still the first lady of my court. I loved you the first time I met you in Italy; you were so gentle, so different from all I knew. I was only a boy, Iría, but I resolved to bring you to my country some way; and I succeeded. What has Feodor to give compared with all I hold for you? Will you stay?"
"But I am his wife," she answered simply. "How could I stay, sire?"
"You love him so?"
Iría grew pale, then raised her hands to her cheeks to cover the returning color that dyed even her temples.
"I—I do not know," she faltered, aghast at a question never asked even of herself. "I—no—he does not me—"
He stared at her, for once thoroughly amazed.
"He does not love you?" he echoed. "You do not know? Why, Iría—"
She flashed into the first and last anger he ever saw in her.