“Why not?”
“I will not wrong Marie. I will not deprive an innocent woman of a husband’s love, of an imperial diadem, to gratify my own ambition! Once—with shame I confess it—I desired her to walk in the ways of guilt; nay, I have plotted for that very end; her fall should be my stepping-stone to glory and power; but now my eyes have become opened. Equivocal as the Empress’s conduct may have seemed, I do not believe that her love has ever seriously wandered from you. If your Majesty will sit calmly down and listen to me, I will so prove her innocence that——”
The sentence was never finished.
Marie, overwhelmed by emotion, at this moment clutched at the portiêre, and the curtain fell.
The fabric, though light, made a swish that caused the Czar to turn his head toward the alcove. And there, clearly revealed in the brilliant light, stood Wilfrid and the missing Czarina!
CHAPTER XXXI
“I BELONG TO WILFRID, NOT TO YOU”
There was a spell of terrible silence, followed by an impulsive cry from the Czar.
“Marie!”
More dead than alive the Czarina leaned against the side of the alcove, her eyes set with a dreadful stare upon the face of the man whom she could not think of as her husband. To her he seemed a veritable stranger. And yet he had the right to take her from Wilfrid and do with her as he listed; and as her dazed mind realised this there broke from her bloodless lips a shivering mournful cry, like water reeds when thrilled by the evening breeze.