“I shall be pleased to learn his name from you.”
“He was my husband—the Czar, Alexander Paulovitch!”
She watched him keenly as if to mark the effect of her words. Wilfrid, therefore, endeavoured to simulate amazement.
“You are the Czarina Elizavetta?” he said in a tone of feigned incredulity.
“I am,” she answered proudly. “And you have dared to address words of love to me, words heard by—by him!”
“He will surely pardon on learning that I was ignorant of your name and rank?”
“You he may pardon; will he forgive me—me, who listened to you? It was but for a minute, I know. For a minute only I was tempted to forget my duty to him, when I remembered how he was neglecting me for the smiles of Pauline de Vaucluse. One brief minute, yet I fear it will be a fatal one for me!”
It was with a keen sense of anguish that Wilfrid marked her mournfulness.
“Why,” she murmured, “ah! why did I withhold my name on first meeting you at the Silver Birch? It would have prevented many complications. But, believing that I should never see you again, I deemed it best to keep my identity a secret. And when I met you a second time, on that night in the Michaelovski Palace and would have told you my name, you spoke so hardly, so contemptuously of Alexander that somehow I shrank, foolishly shrank, from telling you that I was his wife.”