“Your Majesty——” she began.
“Majesty!” exclaimed the other. It frightened her to see Pauline suppliant at her feet.
“Yes, for you are in truth the Czarina——”
“Is this a conspiracy to mock me, or is it really the truth? I cannot—I cannot believe it. It is so strange that I—that I should be—Ah! would to heaven that I were not! What do I gain by the change?—Would that I were dead!” she murmured with a look of unutterable anguish. “O Wilfrid, Wilfrid, we are lost to each other.”
If Pauline ever felt remorse, she felt it at that moment as she contemplated these two, with whose affections she had wantonly sported for the sake of her own ambition.
“Yes, reproach me,” she said, observing Wilfrid’s grave eyes set upon her. “I deserve your bitterest censure. My only excuse is that it was done for France—for France. I have acted wickedly, yet I repented, but—but it was too late! And I, too, have suffered—”
She swayed and would have fallen had not the Czarina held her up by the wrists. For a few moments they continued in this attitude, till the Czarina, pitying Pauline’s unhappy look, stooped and kissed her.
“I forgive you,” she murmured, raising the other.
“Alas! I cannot forgive myself,” murmured Pauline bitterly.