"What a pity," murmured one, "if so handsome a hero should die!"
Barbara rose to her feet, but so great was her emotion that she would have fallen, had not Paul caught her in his arms, where she reclined, clinging convulsively to him.
"Oh! Paul, Paul," she murmured, and for a long time she could do no more than repeat his name.
The sweetness and the pain at her heart! Was this a meeting or a parting? Her throne, her power, her wealth, her triumphs in the diplomacy and the Diet were all as nothing in comparison with her love of Paul. He was her dearest possession, and yet—and yet—this clasp of his arms might be the last! Within an hour his corpse might be carried out of the cathedral, and the voice of the Czar would proclaim her downfall, and the accession of Bora. And what would life be without Paul?
"Do not weep, Barbara," he cried, tenderly stroking her dark hair. "This day shall prove the brightest of your life."
But Barbara failed to see how this could be. To her it would ever remain as the most wretched, for even if she should triumph over Czar and duke, that would not remove the reproach of illegitimacy publicly cast in her teeth. She shivered at the recollection. Of all the incidents which had happened that day, this—the imputed stain on her birth—had most wounded her pride. Would she ever be able to disprove the charge? But it was not the time to be thinking of this now.
"Oh! Paul," she murmured, "it is selfish, it is wrong of me to hazard your life in this barbarous fashion."
"It is too late to plead now," he answered gravely. "I have publicly accepted the honor—for an honor it is—of acting as the princess's champion, and not even Barbara herself shall dissuade me to withdraw."
"But are you certain, quite certain, that you will be victorious?"
"Try me," said Paul grimly.