It was a pity that, amidst all the gorgeous ceremony and confusion of welcome, Iría did not see the warm affection of Stanief's greeting to Allard. Perhaps she would have been less hopelessly afraid when the little Emperor took her hand and presented to her the tall, superb noble whose dark face, finely emotionless, resembled a cameo. Whose velvet eyes she dared not seek behind their curtaining lashes.
Yet Stanief was faultlessly courteous, even kind in his grave manner. It might have been merely that he was so different from her fancies of the last weeks.
The wedding was to take place in two days; two days of festivities, of marvelously decorated streets, of wonderful balls by night. Iría did exactly as she was told; yielded dazedly to Adrian's caresses and accepted the Regent's lavish gifts. Like a beautiful toy she allowed her ladies to dress her half a dozen times a day, and listened submissively to her mother's advice. But the afternoon before her wedding-day, she saw Stanief alone for the first time.
After all, it was not really alone. The Emperor had been chatting with her on the great glass-enclosed balcony, and as Stanief came toward them, he rose with a significant smile and went back to the reception-hall. Still, from that crowded reception-hall they were only separated by arching, open arcades; only slightly screened by towering palms and flowers in huge vases.
Stanief took the chair beside his fiancée and looked at her; this was the first moment when he could do so without feeling himself watched by all curious eyes. He had read perfectly the terror under her mute passivity, the shrinking of her tiny frost-cold hand from his touch, and he pitied her with all his heart. Now, in the lustrous rose-pink gown against which her transparent skin showed without a tinge of color, her bronze-bright head averted, her mouth curved in childish pathos, she inspired him with an anger against Adrian which he had never felt for himself.
"Princess," he said gently, "we have seen so little of each other until now, nor shall we again until after to-morrow. May I say something which has been in my thoughts since we met yesterday?"
"As you will, monseigneur," she murmured.
"I think it is as you will," Stanief corrected, smiling in spite of himself. "But I accept the permission. Will you forgive me if I have imagined that you feared me, Princess?"
Iría raised her topaz eyes to his in complete dismay.
"Monseigneur, you are angry—"