Her chest heaved slowly and fell. She was filled with emotion which she bravely repressed.
“Yes,” she managed to murmur in a low whisper.
“It is too cruel. Because—”
“Because what?” I asked, in a sympathetic voice, bending towards her.
“Ah, don’t ask me, Uncle Colin!” she said bitterly, her welling eyes still fixed blankly upon the sea. “It is cruel because—because I love Dick,” she whispered in open confession.
“My little friend,” I said, “I sympathise with you very deeply. It is, I admit, a very bitter truth which I have been compelled to point out. For that very reason I have been so much against your friendship with young men. Drury is in ignorance of your true identity. He believes you to be plain Miss Gottorp. But when I tell him the truth—”
“Ah, no!” she cried. “You will not tell him—you won’t—will you? Promise me,” she urged. “I must, I know, one day find a way of breaking the bond of love which exists between us. When—when—that—time—comes—then we must part. But he must never know that I have deceived him—he must never know that the reason we cannot be more than mere friends is on account of my Imperial birth. No,” she added bitterly, “even though I love Dick so dearly and he loves me devotedly, I shall be compelled to do something purposely in order that his love for me may die.” Then, sighing deeply, my dainty little companion implored: “You will therefore promise me, Uncle Colin, that you will never—never, under any circumstances, breathe a word to him of who I really am?”
I took her trembling hand for a second and gave her my promise.
I confess I felt the deepest sympathy for her, and told her so frankly and openly as I sat there taking leave of her, for that very evening I intended to leave Brighton and catch the night mail from Charing Cross direct for Moscow.
She said but little, but when we had returned to Brunswick Square and I stood with her at the window of the big drawing-room, she was unable to control her emotions further and burst into a flood of bitter tears.