There was another pause. When Olga spoke again her voice was quiet, but had an oddly strained tone. "Tell me all," she said. "You have a plan——"
"Yes, I have arranged everything," replied Miridoff. "I have kept before me this consideration, that no hint of what occurs this night must ever be known to others. When the Grand Duke Miridoff weds the Princess Olga it must be in the cathedral at Serajoz with the full sanction and in the presence of His Majesty the King. But in the meantime, if the life of your highness's father is to be saved, the link must be forged that will bind you to me. To-night a band of wandering gipsies are camped in the Hawk's Rest, a short distance from here. I have arranged with the chief of the gipsies that to-night he will marry over the tongs a man and woman who will come to him. The contracting parties will be masked, so that not even the chief himself will know who it is he has joined together. When the ceremony has been performed, this ring is to be handed to him to be carried by one of the young men of the tribe to a certain rendezvous where waits the best marksman in the north country.
"I have arranged it in this way," went on Miridoff, "to convince you of the sincerity of my intentions. See, I give the ring to you as an earnest of my good faith. After the ceremony you shall hand it yourself to the gipsy chief, and see it passed to the messenger."
He looked at her steadily a moment, then went on: "There is one thing else. Let me warn you. The gipsy chief is the only one who shares with me the knowledge of where the messenger must go, and he is too completely in my power to divulge the secret—to be amenable to pressure from any source. So you see it is only by obeying me in every particular that you can save your father's life."
Olga had subsided on the couch, her head resting on her arms. Deep fear and a sense of the hopelessness of further struggle against this clever spider who had caught her in his web took possession of her. She knew there was no way out.
"The plan I propose is too irregular to please me," pursued Miridoff, "but it is the only possible solution. In three hours I must start out on a work of great importance. There is not a priest who could be brought here within the time, and in any case this is the only way that can bind you to me without advertising the method of our union to a gossiping world. Marry me to-night and to-morrow you return to Kail Baleski. It shall be given out that you have been rescued from the brigands who carried you off, and at once our marriage shall be properly solemnised before the Patriarch of Ironia. Is it not a most romantic marriage I am offering you?"
Olga stood up and faced him. Something of all that she was giving up, things known and things hoped for, seemed to present itself to her then in that fleeting moment. She covered her face in her hands.
"I will marry you," she whispered.
"Good!" cried Miridoff. "I knew you would see the matter in its right light, my pretty one." Then his voice suddenly changed. "But come, no more of this pettishness. You have taken the step now. Can you not trust me that you will not regret it?"
She remained quite motionless.