"Beautiful Princess!" he whispered softly, as he leaned toward her pale, smiling, gentle face.
Her delicately curved red lips played with mingled melancholy and happiness, and almost childish impulse; and when she spoke, the words were deeply toned, sounding almost like sighs, yet with rapid and impetuous utterance, like a warm shower of blossoms from her beauteous mouth.
"My lover," she said, and Paul's heart leaped with wild joy at the words, "my lover for this one day—listen while I tell what I can hide from you no longer."
And then with halting words she told him of her peril.
"That house where you stayed last night," she said, "it is the home of my cousin Boris," and a sudden shudder passed over her as she spoke the name. "He has long wished to marry me—and I have steadfastly refused; I cannot tell you how I loathe him. It was to escape his importunities that I went to Switzerland—and alas! now I have come back, at the order of the Tsar, who commands me to yield to him." She paused. Paul drew her close in tender sympathy.
"I thought once," she went on, "when I left Paris a week ago, that I could force myself to do this hateful thing. A faithful subject must obey the Tsar. But now I know not what the outcome will be. I cannot make up my mind to consent—and Boris grows more impatient every day. Tell me," she turned her wonderful eyes up to Paul—"what manner of people had he with him?"
And Paul described to his lady the villainous Michael with the red hands, and Virot, the oily Frenchman. And as he told of Mademoiselle Ivanovitch, the red-haired woman, the lady's lip curled scornfully.
"A tissue of lies!" she cried. "Those men are the scum of Europe, blackguards of the worst type—the kind Boris has always gathered round him from his boyhood. And the woman—bah!—he has no sister. She is but a mistress he would have long since cast off were it not that she sometimes is of assistance in his wicked plans."
Then Paul told her of the disturbance of the night before, and of his encounter with the woman that very morning.
Natalie clasped Paul's hand—he thrilled beneath the sudden tightening of her fingers.