Allard smiled with the cordial brilliancy that always sprang in response to his name on Stanief's lips.
"Good night, monseigneur," he answered lovingly.
The next morning, with all elaborate ceremony, the marriage took place. It was remarked that when the Princess stood up, in as much snowy satin, old lace and pearl as could be crowded upon one small feminine figure, opposite Stanief in the vast cathedral, her wide eyes never left his face, and she seemed to find support in his composure. And when they came down the aisle together, her little white-gloved fingers clung to the white sleeve of his uniform as if there alone she touched some reality in the bewildering panorama.
"Did you ever see the frail edelweiss growing on a ledge of some ice-fringed granite cliff?" whispered the volatile Vasili in Allard's ear. "Look, pray, at our Grand Duchess."
"The edelweiss is safe, at least," Allard replied soberly. "Perhaps safer than the cliff."
CHAPTER XI
IN THE REGENT'S STUDY
Stanief was writing, writing steadily, placidly, his pen rustling faintly as it slipped across the paper. The ruddy glow of the open fire was tangled and reflected among the many-faceted knickknacks that littered the desk, caught and tossed back from a dozen shining surfaces, and mockingly echoed by deep-tinted walls and draperies. Most ruddily, most vividly, the light seemed to gather around the writer, as if its quivering pink radiance were a warning or a shield.
It was like another presence in the room, that fire, to the man behind the curtain. He watched it also as he crept stealthily forward, clutching more tightly the object in his hand. A man of the people, shabby, gaunt, unkempt, he stole out into the Regent's study, stepping cautiously on the gleaming floor or on the treacherously soft rugs which slipped beneath his unaccustomed feet. From the velvet hangings he gained the shelter of a tall Vernis-Martin cabinet and crouched in the shadow, shaking from head to foot with nervous tremors.