"No; but I intend to prevent another being murdered on your account. Come!"
I drew her, half by force, into the brightly lighted, almost gorgeous parlor which she had just left, leaving the door open after her, and led her to a chair in which she took her seat, her eyes uneasily watching all my movements.
"Have no fear," I said. "Do not be in the least alarmed. Once in long-past days you called me your faithful George, who was to kill all the dragons lurking in your path. Hitherto I have had no opportunity; or did not use it if I had. The hour is now come; but I cannot do it alone: you must help me and will help me."
"Are you assured of that?" she asked.
Her face had suddenly assumed another expression; the terror which had been previously imprinted upon it, had vanished and made way for a look of dark hatred, the same look that it wore that night when she adjured me to avenge her on the prince.
I do not know how I found the words, but I said what I had come to say.
"What does the prince pay you for it?"
This question was her reply.
It was the same reply that I had expected from the actor, and it was not to hear this that I had held my tongue before him. Here it was different: it was the sister to whom I was speaking: she must believe me: I must find the place in her heart: nature could not so belie herself.
And whether it was that I succeeded in touching the mysterious bond that unites two beings whose veins flow with the same blood; whether it was that Constance's clear intelligence could not reject the proof that I offered, I saw that the dark look passed away from her face, and gave way to a confusion, an astonishment, that passed into actual horror.