“Nadia—is that her name?” asked the Princess, sharply. She had been standing motionless, biting her glove, during Caerleon’s laboured and stammering harangue, her brows contracted into an anxious frown, but now her face relaxed. “I like to hear you say it. Your voice sounds as if you loved her. If I wished to tease you, I might insist on holding you to your engagement, but I don’t, for”—and she mimicked the words he had uttered some minutes before—“I also came here intending to throw myself on your mercy, and beg you to release me from an engagement which was entered into without my consent. Only,” and her voice took a tone of entreaty, “I have more to ask than you.”
“If I can help you in any way, pray command me,” said Caerleon, inexpressibly relieved to find himself transformed from a suppliant into a possible benefactor.
Princess Ottilie smiled anxiously. “You don’t know what you are promising, but I shall hold you to your offer. I am going to confide to you something that no one knows except my mother. It is she who has advised me to consult you, for she has the greatest confidence in your honour and discretion.”
This was spoken very quickly, as if it was a lesson, and Caerleon could only say that, in so far as it rested with him, the Queen and Princess should have no cause to repent of the honour they were doing him.
Almost before the words were out of his mouth, the girl went on speaking hurriedly, walking fast with her face turned away from him, and her hands twisting themselves nervously together: “I also have a romance, your Majesty—a love-story, you call it. After I had visited England with my parents two years ago, we spent some weeks at Pavelsburg, and there I met some one—a distant relation of my mother’s. All these political troubles had not happened then”—she looked up at him piteously—“and I might follow the dictates of my own heart. My father and mother were delighted; the Emperor was pleased. We could not help loving one another; but what happened afterwards would not have seemed so hard if all had not been so bright at first. He had spoken to my mother; she had told my father; but our engagement was not to be announced until we returned home, and the betrothal could take place publicly. But when we reached Eusebia, everything was changed. Your revolution—the Thracian revolution—had taken place; Scythia and Pannonia had quarrelled; the statesmen were playing chess on the map of Europe, and he and I were two of the pawns. He is related to the imperial family of Scythia, and Pannonia could not allow Scythian influence in the Balkans to be strengthened by his marriage with me. They did not tell us plainly that our duty compelled us to part,—they worked underground, through the Grand Duke, my father’s uncle; they sowed dissension between my father and mother; they made our home miserable; they have parted my Prince and me. That is my story, and no one has any pity for us.”
She paused and wrung her hands, her dark eyes searching Caerleon’s face, her lips quivering painfully.
“Don’t cry,” he said in alarm. “If I can help you I will. What is it that you want me to do?”
“There is no one I can trust, no one who will help me. My father orders me to marry you, and Pannonia and the whole of our own family are behind him. I could not escape; they would track me all over the world. My only hope is to divert their attention altogether for a time—for a few days, and so to obtain the chance of marrying my Prince.”
“But who is he—this happy man?” asked Caerleon.
“Alexis Alexievitch,” she replied, with a vivid blush.