“Why not?”
“An Imperial Duchess!”
“Pouf! A condescension on my part! Hasn’t an empress welcomed me to her arms?”
“Bah! don’t compare the damnable old hag Catharine with the young and beautiful duchess. So—you made love to her! And her answer?”
As if he would give it!—give it, that is, word for word. No, not even to his brother. He would have braved the rigours of Siberia first. His cheek, seldom touched by the colour of shame, coloured now as he recalled the Duchess’s flaming words of scorn.
“She took my offer of love as a deadly affront.”
Loris did not wonder at it, though regard for his brother kept him from saying so.
“That day,” continued Arcadius, “I made an enemy, and a dangerous one. It is her aim to expel me from office, and to see that I do not return to it. Either I must destroy her, or she will destroy me. Now you see my reason for throwing this Englishman in her way. Why do you smile?”
“At the amount of unnecessary trouble you have been taking.”