“But how came you to hit off the likenesses so well, for I am told the faces are perfect portraits?”
“That’s easily explained. You know that for the space of a fortnight Paul’s body lay in state in St. George’s Hall. Twice a day the Court and the ministers heard mass beside the bier. By favour of the Empress I was provided with a coign of vantage where, unobserved, I could take surreptitious sketches of the ministers, to be reproduced on canvas. When the picture was finished, I placed, by preconcerted arrangement, a blue lamp in my attic window, and that same night the picture was fetched away by two men. Now you know the whole story,” he said in conclusion. “My patroness, the Empress, I have never seen; and, as for her fair intermediary, I have seen her but once only, namely on that strange night in the Michaelhof.”
“But,” objected Pauline, “if you attended the masses held in St. George’s Hall, you must have seen the Empress Mary every day.”
“Doubtless, and the young Czarina as well, and the Imperial Duchesses. But I don’t call it seeing a woman when her face is covered with a mourning veil.”
In truth, Wilfrid, from his secret place of espial, had breathed anything but a blessing upon the heavy veils worn by the Court ladies on the occasion in question, since the wearing of them prevented him from identifying the mysterious Duchess who, he doubted not, formed one of the group.
“And Ouvaroff, you say, is Paul’s son?” remarked Pauline. “A natural son, of course? It was long suspected—the likeness between the two was so remarkable—but Ouvaroff himself appears to have been almost the last to learn it, and that at a dreadful moment. Poor Ouvaroff! No wonder he looked so ghastly and wild next morning! Do you know he has not been seen since that day?”
“A pity that, for there was a matter I would fain discuss with him,” said Wilfrid, thinking of the night at the Silver Birch.
“No one knows where he is. Some say that in penitence he has turned monk.” And then, coming back to the subject of the picture again, she continued, “And you didn’t fear to set your name to the picture?”
“Fear! Do you take me for Alexander?”
Pauline thought it prudent to ignore this reflection upon her hero. She could not help inwardly acknowledging that while Alexander had walked in darkness, assenting to a course of deceit in the matter of his father’s death, Wilfrid, though well aware that grim fortresses and Siberian mines awaited those who should give umbrage to ministers, had not shrunk from proclaiming the truth in the light of day.