WHEN the Princess Daria rode out of my sight that day she vanished so completely that I could neither see her nor communicate with her again. Prince Voronin understood the art of concealing his women-folk even more thoroughly than the other Muscovites, and he was determined to disregard the marriage of his daughter with a foreigner. He told me so himself, standing on the great steps of the monastery, with old Piotr bearing his sword behind him, and two slaves preceding him with torches. For it was that same night that I met him face to face on the steps, and demanded an interview in which the matter of my marriage should be fully discussed. The man was naturally above the average in height and bore himself with a dignity that was at once fine and disdainful. I thought him then—with the torchlight upon him, in his magnificent dress of dark green and crimson, with his snow-white hair and his falcon eye—one of the handsomest and the proudest men that I had ever seen, and I saw too, that—finding that he could neither buy me nor intimidate me—he hated me cordially, yet he was a smooth man and rarely violent in speech.
I had told him very briefly, but circumstantially, the story of the marriage, and he knew as well as I that it was legal, but not the quiver of an eyelash betrayed the least emotion.
“It rests with the Princess Daria,” I said; “she is my wife—and she must choose. If she is still unwilling—I will not force my claim upon her; but if she respects the bond between us, there is no power on earth that can take her from me.”
The prince was so far unmoved that he smiled.
“In Russia it is the father, and not the daughter, who chooses, sir,” he said coolly, “and so little does her will rule it that I tell you plainly that, if I chose, I would give her to a moujik to-morrow—and she should not disobey me.”
“She is your daughter,” I replied steadily, “but she is also my wife, and you will not separate us, Prince Voronin. I demand to see her—there is no law, in any land, that can keep a husband from seeing his own wife.”
He eyed me coolly, but I saw the throbbing at the temples that comes in anger, and the torchlight falling full on his face stained it with crimson.
“There is no law, sir,” he replied suavely, “but there is my will.”
“Do you intend to prevent an interview?” I demanded sternly; “to take a wife from her husband by force?”
“My dear sir,” he said pleasantly, “I would as lief fling you in the Moskva, as not. Think you that I intend to permit Sophia Alexeievna to marry my daughter at her will—to whom she will? Pshaw, sir, you are a meddlesome foreigner! If Kurakin had married her, I would have flung him from the top of Ivan Veliki; there was no need of your interference to save the daughter of Prince Voronin.”