"Yes," she said earnestly. "I do desire to ask you—for your own sake—to see that no harm happeneth to—my father."
Now she had spoken she sat very pale and distressed, but fixing him with her soft brown eyes ardently.
He flushed, and seemed much moved.
"That you should need to ask——" he began, then checked himself. "I promise," he said.
"For your own dear sake," she cried, "forgive me for speaking of this—but let people know you would not have him hurt——"
He gazed at her intently.
"This is hard for you," he replied. "I could not go without your sanction and your help——"
He broke off again. Speech, which had always seemed inadequate to him, now seemed to merely travesty his feelings.
She too was silent; she had lowered her eyes and seemed to be thinking deeply. The Prince studied her with an almost painful intensity.
She was so lovely, so gracious, so sweet, so high souled ... he remembered how he had disliked and despised her, treated her with neglect, then indifference, made no effort to please or win her; and yet she, during the ten years of their marriage, had never from the first failed in obedience, sweetness, self-abnegation, nor once faltered from a passionate devotion to his interests, an unchanging belief in him, and now, for him, she was doing violence to her own heart and setting herself in active opposition against her father, a tremendous thing for such a nature to bring itself to. As he gazed at her fair youth, pale with anxiety for him, he felt she was the greatest triumph of his life, and her love an undeserved miracle.