"No; and it is essential that he should remain in ignorance. Our elopement from Illyria was touch and go. Ferdinand has moved heaven and earth to find out where she is, because she has been formally betrothed to a Russian Grand Duke, and if she does not return to Blaenau he will not be able to secure the succession."
"Depend upon it," said I, "the Crown Princess is on the way to Blaenau. Not of her own free will, of course. But his Majesty's agents have managed to play the trick."
"You may be right, Arbuthnot. But one thing is certain; my poor brave Sonia will never return to Blaenau alive."
Fitz buried his face in his hands tragically.
"She promised that, you know, in case anything of this kind happened, and I consented to it." The simplicity of his utterance had in it a certain grandeur which few would have expected to find in a man with the reputation of Nevil Fitzwaren. "Everybody doesn't believe in this sort of thing, Arbuthnot, but I and my princess do. She will never lie in the arms of another. God help her, brave and noble and unluckly soul!"
This was not the Fitz the world had always known. I suddenly recalled the flaxen-haired, odd, intense, somewhat twisted, wholly unhappy creature who had rendered me willing service in our boyhood. I had always enjoyed the reputation in our house at school that I alone, and none other, could manage Fitz. I recalled his passion for the "Morte d'Arthur," his angular vehemence, his sombre docility. In those distant days I had felt there was something in him; and now in what seemed curiously poignant circumstances there came the fulfilment of the prophecy.
"Let us assume, my dear fellow," said I, making an attempt to be of practical use in a situation of almost ludicrous difficulty, "that it is not her father who has abducted the Princess Sonia. Let us take it to be the other side, the Republican party.
"It would still mean death; not by her own hand, but by theirs. They twice attempted her life in Blaenau."
"In any case, it is reasonably clear that not a moment is to be lost if we are to help her."
"I don't know what to do," said Fitz, "and that's the truth."