"In the very act of asking you to be my wife, Barbara, I feel compelled to pause. Your story is so suggestive. Supposing you should prove to be a rich heiress, or a peeress, or," he continued, his mind reverting to the portrait of the lady with the diadem, "shall we ascend higher, and say a princess?—you will make a mesalliance by marrying one who has nothing but a cloak and a sword."
"Dreams, Paul, dreams."
"Nay, the interest taken in you by the cardinal proves that you are a person either of rank or wealth, or possibly both."
"I place no faith in the cardinal's story. Doubtless, there does exist somewhere a rich Polish noble, whose infant daughter was lost or stolen away eighteen or nineteen years ago, but I do not believe that I am she, though Ravenna would have me play the rôle of the missing heiress. But even if I were an empress—"
Here Barbara paused in her utterance.
"Yes; if you were an empress—?"
"Cannot you guess the rest?"
"You would be my wife. Is that so, Barbara?"
"Yes, Paul," she replied, simply. "None but you."
Paul raised her beautiful face upward to his own, and looked down into the light of her dark eyes.