Miller, recollecting himself, and colouring at his own timidity and absent-mindedness, answered,—
“The Princess, if she is Russian, learnt Russian history very insufficiently; that’s the main thing I have to say, after reading her papers; but of course, that would be more her teacher’s fault.”
“Well, what do you think? Can it be that there is a spark of truth in her tale?” asked Ekaterina. “Do you suppose for one moment that the Empress Elizabeth might have had such a daughter, and hidden her from all eyes?”
Miller was just on the point of answering: “Oh! yes, of course; what is there in all that so very improbable?” but he remembered at that minute about the mysterious youth, Alexis Shkourin, travelling now in foreign parts, and in his confusion fixed his eyes on the glass door of his aviary.
“Well, and why do you not answer?” said Ekaterina, smiling. “Your Lutheranism does not stand in the way here.”
“Well, everything is possible, your Majesty,” said Miller, shaking his grey curly head. “People do say all sorts of things; some of them may be true.”
“Look here—would it not be strange?” said Ekaterina. “The late Razoumovski was a very good man, and although secretly, still he was the lawful, husband of Elizabeth. Why trample under foot all the laws of nature? Why this heartless denial of their own daughter?”
“Then it was one century, now it’s another,” answered Miller. “Morals differ; if the new Shouiski-Shouvalovi could hide for so many years in solitary confinement the, to them, dangerous Prince John, proclaimed in his infancy emperor, what is there here so very strange, if, in their thirst after influence and power, they should have sent to the end of the earth, or, at any rate, hidden another infant, this unfortunate Princess?”
“But, Gerard Feodorovitch, you forget the most important thing—the mother! How could the empress have borne that? You cannot deny her heart was in the right place; and then, all this was not about a strange child, like Ivanushka, but about her own forsaken daughter.”
“Well! oh, it is very simple,” answered Miller. “Razoumovski, I should think, had nothing at all to do with it. The whole intrigue was brought to bear on the empress—not on the mother.… Very likely, many reasons were brought forward, and she consented. This secret daughter was hidden, sent to the South, and then over the Urals. In the papers of the Princess she speaks of poison, of flight from Siberia to Persia, afterwards to Germany, and then to France.… The Shouiskis of our days have repeated the old tragedy. In guarding the empress, they still kept in readiness for any emergency, a new refugee, saved by them from another world.”