‘You lie, minx,’ said Olga. ‘Speak up, Vera, to-morrow, and give her the lie; save the Tsar from her; he will believe what you say.’
‘Let anyone have the Tsar so long as it is not I,’ said Vera, ‘though it seems to me that each of you is as bad as the other, for neither is honest: you do not love the Tsar, yet you would have him believe that he is adored by you! A sorry wife you would make, either of you!’
‘Will you not change your mind as to the Tsar, Vera?’ said Praskovia, laughing. ‘Remember, he has bidden me ask you this; the choice lies between you and me, for the Tsar will not look at Maria Apraxin; and as for Olga Panief, neither he nor any other man would waste a glance at so sorry a face as hers!’
At this Olga uttered a scream of rage, and, rushing at her enemy, seized her hand and bit it furiously.
Praskovia cried aloud with the pain, and the blood flowed freely, but Vera tied her handkerchief about the wound and comforted the aggrieved one. ‘At any rate, thou art as good as chosen,’ she said, ‘for thou shalt tell the Tsar that I will neither love him nor consent to marry him; therefore thou art Tsaritsa already, if thou wilt have it so!’
A speech which caused Olga, fuming and panting in her chair, to curse aloud both at Vera and at Praskovia, though she made no more violent attacks upon them.
CHAPTER XXIV
It seems that the Regent Sophia, whom, indeed, some have pronounced to be a wonderful woman for her ability in the management of affairs both great and little—though for my part I give all the credit to Galitsin, who was for ever at her right hand to advise, restrain, and even to speak for her when her Highness lacked words—it seems that Sophia had so far impressed her will upon the Tsar Ivan that he was now willing to be married.
How she performed this magician’s trick I am not able to guess; neither can I say whether any of the ordinary spirit of a man had begun to stir in that poor creature at sight of all the womanly beauty which had been placed before him during those last few days.
It may be that somewhere within him there lurked the unmatured embryo of a man’s nature, which had at this time quickened into a kind of half-life, so that he at last consented to gaze with interest upon those fair maidens, and to accept the idea of matrimony without anger and loathing.