"'It is true, Sûr Imar. The troika hath broken down at this gate. The Princess Oria hath never seen Rakhan; neither came she to see him.'
"I laughed, I shouted, as at some fine joke. 'I see, I see my sweet mistake. He came not from her; he came to seek her. Ah, but he met the wrong one; the wrong one it was, and yet the right.'
"What matter what I did or said? Henceforth in all my life, what matters? And when it is over, can I be saved? If so, it will be for Oria's sake. Thank God that she knew before she died, slain by the weapon which she had brought to protect her honour,—and Rakhan would have tasted cold lead, I trow, if his miscreant scheme had entrapped her,—by the mercy of God, she knew in that short hour the hellish fraud which slew her.
"The bullet had not touched her heart, and she passed away as a flower fades, drooping from some inward harm. My pistols were left in my holsters, but I loaded Oria's again, that I might not be slow to follow her, the moment she could not see it done. But she opened her eyes for the last time, when they seemed to have lost all sight of earth, and she tried to lay her hand on mine, with deep love looking back upon me through the cloud of Death.
"'For Orry's sake, for babe's, for mine,' she whispered with her latest breath.
"I pledged my word; but how often was it almost beyond my power to keep! And one of my pledges was lost already; when I got home—to my desolate and wretched home—there was only my baby Dariel left, to link me to this altered world. Marva was gone back to her Osset tower, and it seemed better so; for I had brought her husband's lying letter, handed me by Kobaduk, and purporting to come from her. To wit, an urgent summons for my wife to fly to my bedside and nurse me through a dangerous wound at Patigorsk. This letter I meant to place on Marva's lap, and ask if she were privy to it. I hope not, I pray not; for it would be almost too black-hearted, too treacherous for the worst woman's revenge. I hope she believed that Oria, whom she always hated, had left home through her own desire, to meet Rakhan in that festive town. For a woman has not strong faith always in the virtue of other women. To her own faith she will be true; but she doubts about theirs too shrewdly. Women of the common sort, I mean. My Oria was too sweet for that."
CHAPTER XXVII IMAR'S TALE—EXILE
"You understand from what I said, that my only son was gone as well, the eldest born of our fervent love, to whom with a pleasant conceit I had given the name of 'Origen,'—born of Oria. The other was named from the place of her own birth, arriving unexpectedly, when we went in the troika to see the great post-house just built by the Russians on their grand new road, which cuts the great mountain-chain beneath the towering peak of Kazbek.