“And your suspicion of me——?” said Wilfrid.
“Was the prompting of Baranoff. Long before I met you at Berlin he had assured me that the Czarina, the Grand Duchess Elizavetta she was then, had a secret lover in some Englishman. He refrained from giving the name, however, till the night of that ball. ‘To-night,’ said he, ‘I will point out to you the favourite of the Grand Duchess.’”
“And he did it,” said Wilfrid, “by writing my name upon a card and sending it to you as we sat together. And you could believe him! Serge, my boy——”
Wilfrid stopped on seeing the Prince enter, leading by the hand a girl who seemed reluctant to come forward.
It was Nadia of the Silver Birch, as pretty as ever, but deadly pale and so timid that after one glance at Wilfrid she averted her eyes, and did not look at him again.
“Now, Nadia, tell your tale,” said Prince Sumaroff. “It is the only way to set matters right.”
So Nadia told how, bribed by Baranoff with the price of her own and her father’s freedom, she had introduced the Englishman into the bedroom of the Czarina—whom she then only knew as a great lady. Immediately upon doing so she had apprised the Czarina’s maids, who (themselves in the plot) were awaiting her summons. Then, having done the work assigned her, Nadia had fled to a room above, where the removal of a knot of wood in the flooring had enabled her to observe all that passed in the chamber below. She could thus testify to the lady’s innocence and the Englishman’s honour. Her father having died shortly afterwards, Nadia had come to St. Petersburg and entered the service of Prince Sumaroff. One day when she was on the Nevski Prospekt there rode by in state a lady, whom she recognised with fear and trembling, and who, she learned from a bystander, was the new Czarina. After a long struggle with herself she resolved to confess her misdeed and chose for the occasion the night of the masquerade. Putting her statement into writing and having incidentally learned from the Princess Sumaroff in what costume the Czarina intended to appear, Nadia had watched her opportunity to present the letter to her, saying no more about it than that its contents would exonerate her and Lord Courtenay from a false charge. The Czarina eagerly took the missive, but said she would reserve the reading of it till she should have returned to the Winter Palace. “‘And,’ she added, ‘since I am known to you by my costume, I may be known to others, and therefore, good Nadia, in order that I may be incognita, you and I in this quiet nook here must exchange costumes for a time.’” It was agreed that they should meet again in the same spot an hour after midnight; and so the two parted, the Empress in the plain grey domino and Nadia in the rich brocaded silk. The Czarina, however, failed to appear at the time and place appointed, a fact that puzzled Nadia very much. The Empress during a whole month having taken no notice of her and her writing though the matter was one of vital interest to her good name that very day, Nadia, moved by some indefinable fear, had revealed all to the Prince and Princess of Sumaroff.
“And you are willing to tell this story in the presence of the Czar himself?” asked Ouvaroff.
Nadia expressed her willingness, even though the telling should end in her exile to Siberia.
“I will answer for it that no hurt shall befall you,” said Ouvaroff. “The Czar will be more pleased than angry to hear your tale. But it’s as well for Baranoff that he has gone to his account.”