What the Princess said was almost inaudible to Wilfrid: it was more by the motion of her lips than by the actual sound proceeding from them that he understood her to say:—
“I said what I did”—alluding to her implied denial of his presence, surely a pardonable evasion considering the circumstances—“to save you from being cut to pieces before my eyes—your fate if found here. Do not go—till—till they have had time to fall asleep again.”
With that she sank back upon her pillow.
To be sitting by the bedside of a fair and youthful princess was a very charming situation, but it had its drawbacks. Should discovery ensue, then, unless the Princess had the nature of an angel, how could she ever forgive the man who had made her innocence appear as guilt? From her, whose love he was so anxious to win, what could he now look for but resentment? The endearing impression made on her mind by his saving of her life, though confessedly he had no recollection of the event, would now be completely effaced by this unfortunate blundering into the wrong room at night.
As Baranoff’s face, with its sneering smile, rose vividly before him, Wilfrid turned cold at the thought that he had done the very thing the minister had wanted him to do! Should this affair come to his ears how he would triumph in the Princess’s shame! How quick he would be to reveal it to the world! Wilfrid recalled his words: “Death at the hands of the State for the Princess as well as for her lover.” That there was truth in this utterance seemed evidenced by the words of the Princess herself; that he would be slain before her eyes if found in her bed-chamber. Such a fear spoke but too plainly of her position, for if she were powerless to prevent her retinue from butchering him, it was clear that she was not really their mistress. She was, in fact, a sort of honourable prisoner of State, free to travel if she chose, but attended by an escort, told off to watch for any suspicious act. In forecasting his probable doom she had not touched upon her own. Was it possible that he was really bringing upon her a like fate?
He ventured to steal a glance at her face. How beautiful it was, with its soft violet eyes shaded by long dark lashes? Whatever may have been the arrangement of her hair earlier in the evening, it now lay upon the pillow like a bright aureole around her face, one golden tress twining about her white throat like a vine tendril clasping a marble column.
If ever woman had cause to be angry with Wilfrid that woman was this princess, and yet her face betrayed not the faintest sign of resentment; on the contrary, there was something in her look assuring him that, come what might, she would be the last person in the world to reproach him for an act unwittingly committed, a forgiving tenderness of spirit on her part that, while it endeared her the more to Wilfrid, at the same time enhanced, rather than lessened, his despair.
Half an hour passed without a word spoken on either side. Then the Princess bent forward till her golden hair was so close to his own that he could feel her warm breath on his cheek.
“Lord Courtenay,” she said in the faintest of whispers, “before you go, a few words. You have heard me called ‘Highness.’ Do you know my name and rank?”
“I regret to answer no,” replied Wilfrid, speaking in a tone similarly subdued.