Allard gazed at him in utter wonder.
"Feodor believes I force the marriage to annoy him and please Dalmorov. It is not so; it is because I want Iría here. You understand that?"
"I am trying, sire."
Adrian stood up decisively.
"Let us go in. When the time comes, you shall go with her escort."
CHAPTER IX
GUINEVERE OF THE SOUTH
It was quite a month after that sunny noon on the Emperor's terrace, that Maria Luisa Iría de Bourbon was informed of her betrothal to the Grand Duke Feodor Stanief. She also received the announcement on a garden terrace, by a caprice of chance; but it was a terrace of the South, starred and flowered all over with violets, heavily-sweet tuberoses and blue Florentine irises. Moreover, it was sunset, and she stood a slender white figure against the rosy sky.
"It is all decided?" she asked in a hushed, pathetic little voice, a voice shattered into crystalline fragments, like the dash of a clear brook against a rock. "It is sure to happen, señora?"