“Once? Yet your attendant has called you Highness!”
“Alexis forgets that——” And then she stopped. “No matter. Call me by that title. ’Twill do as well as any other.”
A duchess no longer! What did she mean? Had the jealous Alexander deprived her of the title conferred by Paul? That he could do, but he could not take away her Imperial descent, nor the regal beauty that accompanied it. It was clear that, so far as Wilfrid was concerned, she wished still to remain incognita.
“Were you,” said the Duchess—to call her still by that name—“were you expecting to see me to-night, when you accompanied Alexis?”
“Presumptuous of me, perhaps,” smiled Wilfrid, “but I was not without hope that the summons might have come from you.”
It was with a certain touch of hauteur in her manner that the Duchess replied:—
“Learn, then, that it was not I who called you to this meeting.”—Wilfrid’s hopes fell.—“Not till an hour ago was it told me that you had been sent for.” Wilfrid’s hopes rose. Her coming to see him immediately on hearing of his arrival was proof that she took some interest in his fate. “Is it likely,” she continued gravely, and speaking more as if to herself than to him, “that I should invite you to a meeting like this, when death would be your lot should you be seen here by my enemies?”
Her enemies? Wilfrid wished he could have them all in line and fight with them, one by one, from sunrise to sunset, with due intervals for rest and refreshment. He’d have left none alive!
“Then, since you did not send for me, will your Highness condescend to tell me who did?”
“The Empress.”