A shadowy form moving uncertainly to and fro near the corner of the street, appeared to spring forward and to falter back again, as the King, hurriedly departing, glanced up and down the street once or twice as though in doubt or questioning, and then walked to his brougham. The soft hues of a twilight sky, in which the stars were beginning to appear, fell on his face and showed it ashy pale; but he was absorbed in his own sad and bitter thoughts,—lost in his own inward contemplation of the love which consumed him,—and he saw nothing of that hidden watcher in the semi-gloom, gazing at him with such fierce eyes of hate as might have intimidated even the bravest man. He entered his carriage and was rapidly driven away, and the shadow,—no other than Sergius Thord,—stumbling forward,—his brain on fire, and a loaded pistol in his hand,—had hardly realised his presence before he was gone.
“Why did I not kill him?” he muttered, amazed at his own hesitation; “He stood here, close to me! It would have been so easy!”
He remained another moment or two gazing around him at the streets, at the roofs, at the sky, as though in a wondering dream,—then all at once, it seemed as if every cell in his brain had suddenly become superhumanly active. His eyes flashed fury,—and turning swiftly into the house which the King had just left, he ran madly up the stairs as though impelled by a whirlwind, and burst without bidding, straight into the room where Lotys still knelt, weeping. At the noise of his entrance she started up, the tears wet on her face.
“Sergius!” she cried.
He looked at her, breathing heavily.
“Yes,—Sergius!” he said, his voice sounding thick and husky, and unlike itself. “I am Sergius! Or I was Sergius, before you made of me a nameless devil! And you—you are Lotys!—you are weeping for the lover who has just parted from you! You are Lotys—the mistress of the King!”
She made him no answer. Drawing herself up to her full height, she flashed upon him a look of utter scorn, and maintained a contemptuous silence.
“Mistress of the King!” he repeated, speaking in hard gasps; “You,—Lotys,—have come to this! You,—the spotless Angel of our Cause! You!—why,—I sicken at the sight of you! Oh, you fulfil thoroughly the mission of your sex!—which is to dupe and betray men! You were the traitor all along! You knew the real identity of ‘Pasquin Leroy’! He was your lover from the first,—and to him you handed the secrets of the Committee, and played Us into his hands! It was well done—cleverly done!—woman’s work in all its best cunning!—but treachery does not always pay!”
Amazed and indignant, she boldly confronted him.
“You must be mad, Sergius! What do you mean? What sudden accusations are these? You know they are false—why do you utter them?”