“And now, during the past month, she has won her way to my heart and this makes my task difficult. I have been telling her of my ambition, and she has been pleading prettily with me to save the Empress Elizavetta from dishonour, little thinking that she was pleading for herself! What a shock when she learns how I have deceived her! when she realises the guilt from which a word of mine could have saved her!”
“Her own fault. If blame is to be apportioned, she must take the initial share; for, to her encouragement of Lord Courtenay is due our present imbroglio. We are but helping her onward in the path she entered of her own accord.”
“True,” assented Pauline, glad to snatch at any argument in justification of her wrong-doing. “And to-day the goal is in sight, for to-day she entrusts herself and her future to his keeping.”
“That’s good,” murmured the doctor. “I have all but completed the arrangements for their departure, and her flight will prevent the Empress Elizavetta from ever returning to her husband.”
“The sooner they go the better,” observed Pauline, “or I shall be repenting my share in the plot.”
She turned from him and, entering the castle, proceeded to a little oratory which, originally Byzantine in character, had been altered by Pauline to a style more in harmony with Latin art.
The sunlight, coloured as it passed through stained glass, slanted upon an altar surmounted by an ivory crucifix, a symbol forbidden by the Greek Church.
To this place came Pauline in a devotional spirit. For, as Italian bandits put up prayers to the saints for a successful haul, and as Cornish wreckers of old went straight from church to kindle beacons on the cliffs, so did Pauline attend daily to pray to the Virgin for the furtherance of a scheme that required for its success a continuous course of deception.
She was about to light a candle in honour of the Madonna, when a voice seemed to whisper, “Hypocrite!”
The taper dropped from her hand and she sank trembling upon a seat, her gaze wandering slowly around as if expecting to encounter some speaker.