“I shall remain silent.”
“And you are entitled to leave of absence—eh? You can return to England without arousing suspicion?”
“Yes. I have eight weeks due to me.”
“Excellent. I can do nothing more—except to thank you, Trewinnard, to thank you most sincerely for assisting me, and to await word from you. Sign it with ‘Bathildis,’ and I shall know.” And the great burly, bearded man held out his big, strong hand—the iron hand—as sign that my audience was at an end.
I bowed low over it, and next moment the heavy white door of enamelled steel swung open and I backed out of the Imperial presence, the bearer of a secret as strange and grim as it has ever been the lot of any man to lock within his breast.
What the Emperor had revealed to me was undreamed of by that gay, reckless and intriguing circle which comprised the Russian Court—undreamed of by the chancelleries of Europe.
The merest whisper of it would, I knew, stagger the world. And yet he had, in sheer desperation, confided in me a most amazing truth. As I descended that broad, handsome flight of thickly-carpeted marble steps, where flunkeys in brilliant grey and purple livery bowed at every turn, and equerries and officials in smart uniforms came and went, my brain was awhirl at the magnitude of the affair, and the terrible scandal which must result if ever the secret were betrayed—the secret of a throne.
A thought flashed across my mind—the knowledge of my own personal peril. I had enemies—bitter enemies. My heart sank within me as I stepped into the great gilded hall, for I had given a promise which I much feared I would never be permitted to live and fulfil.