There was a spell of terrible silence, followed by an impulsive cry from the Czar.

“Marie!”

More dead than alive the Czarina leaned against the side of the alcove, her eyes set with a dreadful stare upon the face of the man whom she could not think of as her husband. To her he seemed a veritable stranger. And yet he had the right to take her from Wilfrid and do with her as he listed; and as her dazed mind realised this there broke from her bloodless lips a shivering mournful cry, like water reeds when thrilled by the evening breeze.

As for the Czar, his mind was filled with consternation, rage, and embarrassment. Though he saw before him his missing wife secreted in an alcove with her lover, he was conscious of the ludicrousness of posing as an injured husband, seeing that he was himself caught in the very act of making love to Pauline.

The latter was scarcely less agitated than Marie herself. The deception practised by her during the preceding month was now laid bare to Wilfrid. She had hoped, by making a voluntary confession that night, to dull the edge of his anger. Too late now! After her first hasty glance at the alcove she stood with averted eyes, fearing to meet his reproachful gaze.

Of the four Wilfrid was the least embarrassed, though he scarcely knew how to act in this dilemma.

By the law of God and of man Marie belonged to her husband. Yet a rapid review of the facts—in particular the Czar’s illicit love-making—made Wilfrid hesitate to resign her unconditionally to a man whom she abhorred, and who had vowed his intention of immuring her for life within a convent.

The Czar was the first to break the silence.

“An interesting tableau!” he said with a bitter sneer. “The guilty wife and her paramour hiding from the husband’s gaze.”

Wilfrid’s eyes flashed dangerously, though he was compelled to admit that the accusation was natural in the circumstances.

“A word of caution, Sire. We Courtenays are not accustomed to take insults, even from emperors.”

“Brave words from the hero that fled the duel!”

“There was no fleeing on the part of Lord Courtenay,” said Pauline. “He would have met your Majesty, but when on his way to the rendezvous he was seized by my orders and brought to Runö.”

“An act of treason!” commented the Czar, the autocrat asserting himself above the lover.

“It was the saving of your life,” was Pauline’s answer, a tacit assumption of Wilfrid’s superior swordsmanship that galled Alexander’s vanity.

“Stand aside from my wife!” he cried angrily to Wilfrid.

“Your wife! How can that be when but a few minutes ago you disowned her?”

The charge was true and the Czar could not deny it.

Scarcely knowing what to say or do in his embarrassment he looked hard at his wife, she at him. Usually so loving she now seemed a veritable piece of marble. It was impossible to understand so strange a change. Pauline in refusing his love had shown some pity for him, but Marie, in holding aloof, displayed not a trace of affection or regret; her manner was as though she had never known him.

As he looked, a new feeling stole over his heart. Four weeks’ absence seemed to have made her more beautiful. With that inconsistency characteristic of human nature he now began to desire what but a short time before he had been willing to discard.

Whether this change of feeling was due to Marie’s very coldness, or to Pauline’s rejection of him, or to jealousy of Wilfrid, or to all three causes working together, certain it is that Alexander found his affection, long-suspended, beginning to revive; if Marie had made but one step towards him he would have been willing to receive her. It was hard to believe that he had lost her for ever. He wished that Pauline and Wilfrid were not present that he might take her by the hand and speak the tender words of the old days; surely, then, her hardness would relent?

An impulsive step forward on his part caused the Czarina to cling shudderingly to her new protector.

“Wilfrid!” she gasped. “Remember your promise! Do not—do not give me up to this man. I shall die if he touch me! God forgive me ... if I do wrong! I cannot ... I cannot let you go. I am yours ... yours only.”

The rigid moralist, reasoning from a distance, will say that it was Wilfrid’s duty to retire immediately in favour of the husband: but let that moralist be in the like situation, with a beautiful woman clinging to him, her lovely eyes appealing for aid, the perfume of her dress casting an intoxicating spell around her, and he would do as Wilfrid did, who, casting aside nice ethical consideration, silently vowed that Marie should not be led off against her will.

The Czar stood perfectly confounded at his wife’s declaration.

“She calls him ‘Wilfrid’! Says she is ‘his alone’! My God! is this the language of innocence?”

“She is not in her right mind,” intervened Pauline hastily. “She——”

But the emperor cut her short before she could make the necessary explanation.

“It is easy to see that. He has corrupted her nature.”

“The Czarina,” said Wilfrid, though it grated upon him to use the title, “has lived at Runö as purely as a vestal maiden. My word of honour upon it.”

In view of Marie’s attitude at that moment the Czar might be pardoned for declining to accept Wilfrid’s statement.

“Your word! Yours!” he retorted with ineffable disdain.

“Mine,” returned Wilfrid. “And never yet did Courtenay speak falsely, or—sign a placard that his father had died of apoplexy!”

“By heaven, you die for that saying!” cried Alexander, clapping his hand upon his sword-hilt.

“Faith! ’tis hard if one must die for speaking the truth!”

“Get you from the side of that lady,” said the Czar, his eyes blazing with wrath.

“Do not leave me, Wilfrid!” murmured Marie.

“The Czar bids, but the Czarina forbids!” returned Wilfrid. “Honour enjoins me to obey the lady.”

“By what right do you constitute yourself her champion?”

“By the right of every man to protect a woman, even the wife of another, from injustice.”

“Injustice?”

“You have threatened an innocent lady with life-long imprisonment in a convent. From such fate it shall be my duty to defend her.”

Emboldened by these words, and moved by a sudden impulse, Marie kissed Wilfrid, placed her arms about his neck, and, facing the Czar, said, with a proud light shining from her eyes:—

“I belong to Wilfrid, not to you.”

She was never dearer to Wilfrid than at that moment as she stood with her arms about him—to the Czar, proud and defiant, to him, all tenderness and trust. However questionable the nature of his triumph, Wilfrid would have been more than human had he not felt a thrill of pleasure. His dashing audacity could rise no higher: henceforth it must descend; he could never hope to surpass the feat of hearing an empress declare her love for him in the very presence of her husband.

Alexander drew his sword with intent to wreak vengeance upon the man who had stolen his wife’s heart.

Pauline, trembling all over, threw herself in his way.

“No, no!—for God’s sake—your Majesty—you are risking your life! Consider your rank—Sasha!”

Putting aside her detaining grasp Alexander, his blade gleaming in his hand, advanced towards the alcove amid the screams of the two women.

With a movement, as swift as it was gentle, Wilfrid detached himself from Marie’s arms, placed her behind him, drew his own blade and assumed an attitude of defence.

“Leave this apartment to me and to the Empress!” cried Alexander, pointing with his sword the way Wilfrid should go.

“If the Empress bids me,” replied Wilfrid.

But no such bidding came from the white lips of the Empress, who had sunk half-fainting upon the seat within the alcove.

Wilfrid’s words, the Czarina’s attitude, put the finishing touches to the Emperor’s fury. With a cry of “Look to yourself!” he rushed upon the defiant Englishman, but, on the very point of making a savage lunge, he stopped short; his sabre dropped; and then, his face flushing purple and his eyes rolling in their orbits, he fell prostrate on the floor.