For a moment she ceased, and the different faces looked curiously uncomfortable and startled at so keen a vivisection of their inner natures. Mrs Ray Jefferson, however, feeling that she had been left out in the cold, and anxious for a special message to herself, broke the spell of silence.
“Have you nothing to say to me, Princess?” she asked beseechingly.
Then the beautiful head moved restlessly to and fro, and the face grew less placid and child-like. She began to speak, but now the words came in quick disjointed fragments. “They are standing beside you,” she said. “I must go. You may come with us, but not Julian. Keep Julian away... keep Julian away—”
“What does she mean?” cried Mrs Jefferson, turning pale. “And—oh gracious!” she cried to her husband, “look at Colonel Estcourt. Is he going to faint?”
All eyes turned on the Colonel. He lay back on his chair white and gasping. “My God,” he cried in a stifled voice. “My power is gone. I can’t hold her. I can’t keep her back.”
“She is speaking again,” cried Mrs Jefferson, in low, terrified accents. “Oh, I don’t half like this. I wish we had never come.”
Then a great awe and stillness fell upon them, and, despite their terror and their dread, every ear strained to catch the quick disjointed words that fell from those strange lips.
“I am there... How still the streets are, and the snow—how fast it falls. How they crowd round the palace gate to-night. Stay the horses, Ivan, I will speak... Do not fear, my friends, your lives are safe. I promise it... What is this? My rooms? How lonely they seem to-night. ‘Alone?’ Yes, I am always alone. No lover’s step has ever echoed through this cloistered silence. Alone and sad. Ah! how I have suffered here... What do they say? It will be over soon, it will be over—soon. One more battle to win. Let me summon all my courage now. I have faced ordeals before. I have forgotten woman’s fears, and laid aside woman’s scruples. Am I not pure? Am I not brave? Yet why do I tremble? One weakness is still unconquered, one human love burns true and deep and steadfast in my heart. I cannot cast it out. I will not; not even at your bidding; not even to make my task easier.
“A step in the silence... Who dares to cross my chambers? Courage, my heart. There on the threshold stand my White Guard. Why should I fear? Courage! courage—”
Like one carved in stone Julian Estcourt sat and listened. The dumb misery of a terrible expectance held every faculty in its iron grasp. Was his dread to be realised? It seemed so, for all control was gone; a higher power had seized the reins. She had escaped him, and an awful horror was upon him lest he, in his folly and shortsightedness, had assembled these people here only to be witnesses of the degradation of the peerless creature he had so worshipped and so loved.