“Your Highness is safe with me; have no fear. But since you seem to live in an atmosphere of peril, why not seek to escape from it?”
“How?”
“There is a way open to you,” said Wilfrid, with a sudden and bold inspiration. “The British Embassy is about to be re-established at St. Petersburg. Let that be your asylum. Come with me this night. Tell the Ambassador your secret history. Make him the guardian of your person. Under the protection of England you will be safe.”
“Lord Courtenay,” she said decisively, “yours is an impossible remedy.”
“I will believe so only when you have proved it to be such.”
“Were I to take refuge there, the Czar would demand my surrender.”
“Very likely; and my good uncle, the Ambassador, would meet the demand with a refusal.”
“I think not. Let the refusal be given, however; that would not prevent the Czar from entering with his troops.”
“Not so. Such an act were an outrage upon the law of nations. The Czar would have to face an immediate renewal of the war with England.”