“I merely echo the popular judgment,” I replied. “It is said she is one of the most beautiful girls in all Russia.”
“Ah!” he laughed. “Next we shall have her flirting with you, Trewinnard. You are a bachelor. Do beware of the little dark-eyed witch, I beg of you!”
“No fear of such contretemps, Sire,” I assured him with a smile. “I am double her age, and, moreover, a confirmed bachelor. The Embassy is expensive, and I cannot afford the luxury of a wife—and especially an Imperial Grand Duchess.”
“Who knows—eh, Trewinnard? Who knows?” exclaimed the Sovereign good-naturedly. “But let’s return to the point. Am I to understand that you are ready and willing to execute this secret commission for me? You are well aware how highly I value the confidential services you have already rendered to me. But for you, remember, I should to-day have been a dead man.”
“No, Sire,” I protested. “Please do not speak of that. It was the intervention of Providence for your protection.”
“Ah, yes!” he said in a low, fervent tone, his brows contracting. “I thank God constantly for sparing me for yet another day from the hands of my unscrupulous enemies, so that I may work for the good of the beloved nation over which I am called to rule.”
There, in that room, wherein I had so often listened to his words of wisdom, I sat fully recognising that though an Emperor and an autocrat, he was, above all, a Man.
With all the heavy burden of affairs of State—and not even a road could be made anywhere in the Russian Empire, or a bridge built, or a gas-pipe laid, without his signature—with all the onus of the autocratic Sovereign-power upon his shoulders, and with that constant wariness which he was compelled to exercise against that cunning camarilla of Ministers, yet one of his chief concerns was with that pretty little madcap Natalia, daughter of his brother, the Grand Duke Nicholas.
He wished to suppress her superabundance of high spirits and stamp out her tomboy instincts.
“I am reading your thoughts, Trewinnard,” the Emperor remarked at last, pressing his cigarette-end slowly into the silver ashtray to extinguish it. “My request has placed you in a rather awkward position—eh?”