“Delays are dangerous, Princess. I will help you any way you like. And it will be wise to take advantage of his long absence to make your escape. Tell me your destination, and I will myself bring round a carriage to some quiet entrance where you can slip out unobserved. I have not told you that I go about with a bodyguard with which the General furnished me. The carriage shall be told to go at a walking pace. I and my attendants will keep it in sight till you are safely at your destination.”
She thanked him warmly, but still persisted that she would prefer to wait till to-morrow. If she changed her mind before the day was out, she would slip out with her maid and take a passing conveyance.
Corsini took her hand and held it for a little time in his, while he gazed earnestly into her troubled eyes, from which she could with difficulty keep back the tears.
“My heart bleeds for you, dear lady. I wish I could convince you, and I hate to leave you here. Will you let me know to-morrow to what course of action you have made up your mind?”
She promised that she would, and the young man left her with feelings of dire foreboding. Please Heaven, this night’s work would turn out so well that very shortly Zouroff would be rendered harmless and impotent. To let him loose on the world was like letting a wild and savage beast out of its cage.
The Prince did return to the Palace about the middle of the afternoon. Was his message, that he would not be home till late at night, simply a blind to lull his sister into a false sense of security? He did not go near her; he went up to his own apartments by a private staircase, only used by himself.
He summoned his valet, Peter, and gave him some very minute instructions. Peter, knowing what was in store for his truculent master, would have liked to offer a little sensible advice, to dissuade him from the course he was bent on pursuing.
But the habits of long obedience, the fear that if he opposed him in the smallest detail he might draw suspicion upon himself, weighed heavily on him. Reluctantly he agreed to obey Zouroff’s orders. Later on, when Zouroff was caged himself, he might be able to undo the mischief he had promised to abet.
The Prince stole out of the Palace as silently as he had entered it. Nobody but Peter and another servant, as much in his confidence as the valet himself, knew that he had been there.
It was a very busy day with him. A few more hours should see the end of all this plotting and scheming, should see his well-laid plans mature. The thought of vengeance, and a sense of coming triumph, induced in him a certain exultation which expressed itself in his resolute glance, his assured bearing. He made his way on foot to the villa of Madame Quéro. He had made up his mind to have a little reckoning with her, in order to wind up his final accounts.