Sitting beside the sufferer was Maura, who rose when I came in, and left us two alone, save for that unseen Angel who calls us to the presence of our God.
The princess looked at me with her beautiful wistful eyes, as she had looked when she gave me the amber roses in the narrow street.
"Gloria, little sister, I am going to tell how Irene died."
"No, no, not if it distresses you."
"I would rather tell you. Listen! I have not much time to speak. As you know, we are of a noble Russian family, and Irene and I were the only children. I was ten years older than Irene, and was educated in France; she came to England, and was your schoolmate!
"I was passionately fond of the child I had seen an infant lying in her pink-lined cot, and when she came out and married Prince Alex Laskine, I prayed that God's sunshine might light on my darling's head. Then, I myself married, and travelled with my husband in all kinds of strange, out-of-the-way places; in one of which he died, and I came back to St. Petersburgh, a childless, lonely widow!
"But there was no Irene; her husband had been implicated in a plot, and had been sent to O——, one of the most desolate places in Siberia, and my sister had voluntarily accompanied him!
"When I heard this, I never rested until I too was en route to Siberia! I wanted to take Irene in my arms and to console her as her dead mother would have done. O—— was a fearful place, just a colony of dreary huts by the sea. Behind were the wolf-infested forests; in the midst of it, the frowning fortress prison! When I showed my ukase, and demanded to see my relations, they simply showed me two graves. Irene and Alex rested side by side, in the silent acre, and an exile told me how they had died! Alex had been knouted for refusing to play the part of Judas, and had passed away in the fortress. Irene was found dead inside their small wooden hut, kneeling beside her bed. Her heart had broken! My little Snow Flower had been crushed under the iron heel of despotism.
"He by whose mandate this iniquity was done was General Loris Trakoff, the governor of the province! I was turned to stone by Irene's grave, and afterwards became a partisan of the Nihilists.
"Night and day I pondered upon how I could be revenged upon Trakoff, and at last Fate seemed to favour me.