CHAPTER VI
HEIRESS TO THE THRONE!
On the fifth morning after leaving Gora, Wilfrid and his yamchik were speeding over a landscape that presented to the eye little more than a vast expanse of virgin white, sparkling beneath the rays of a pale, northern sun, that gave light, but not warmth.
“St. Petersburg!” cried the yamchik suddenly, pointing with his whip to the far-off northern horizon, which, presenting hitherto a smooth line, began now to have its continuity broken by a series of irregularities.
As the horses raced onwards, higher and ever higher out of the illimitable sea of white, there rose to view a curious and, to an occidental eye, fantastic mingling of palaces and minarets, of cupolas and crosses, each gradually becoming more clearly defined against the pale lilac of the Arctic sky.
Now, more than ever, did Wilfrid realise the madness of his enterprise.
He was hastening to a city that held two at least of his enemies, namely, Count Baranoff and the recently alienated Ouvaroff; to whom must probably be added a third, in the shape of the Czar Paul—which was tantamount to saying that he had a whole empire against him.
Now with the aid of friends, a man has often succeeded, despite police and spies, in eluding the vigilance of the Government; but no such hope sustained Wilfrid, seeing that in all the wide city there was not one man to whom he could look for refuge.
“I am entering St. Petersburg,” he mused. “Shall I ever leave it? ’Tis doubtful. I feel, for all the world, like a prisoner riding to the guillotine. No matter! Honour forbids me to go back. That my princess is to be found here is a sufficient reason for going forward. If her life is threatened, let them take mine as well.”
And he consoled himself with that aphorism of the desperate, “What is to be, will be.”