A few more words passed and then Wilfrid, with a glance at his watch, opined that it was high time for him to go to bed.

“Will you show the gospodin to his room, Nadia?” said the innkeeper.

“He had better pull off those heavy boots first,” suggested the girl.

And Wilfrid, knowing her reason, good-humouredly complied.

“And you’ll not get up till after ten?” pleaded Boris. “The boyarine must not know that I have broken my word. And I must keep your yamchik out of the way till she has taken her departure.”

“Very good. To please you I’ll prolong my slumbers,” assented Wilfrid, “though I confess I should like to have a peep at the fair boyarine.” And bidding the innkeeper “good-night,” Wilfrid followed Nadia, who led the way with lighted lamp.

“Tread softly,” she said with a subdued laugh. “Don’t disturb the repose of the Ugly One, whatever you do. So savage-looking is he that he’ll think nothing of running you through the body with his long sword if he should be waked before his time.”

Mindful more of the boyarine than of the Ugly One, Wilfrid stepped with noiseless tread.

“Your room,” said Nadia, as they ascended a staircase, “is exactly over the boyarine’s bed-chamber, so you must move about as silently as a ghost.”

Conversing thus in whispers she turned down the corridor that led from the second landing.

“This is your room,” she said, pausing before a closed door.

Wilfrid, taking the lamp from her hand, wished her “good night.”

“The last Englishman parted from me very differently.” There was no mistaking the saucy invitation of her eye and lip. Pretty faces were made to be kissed, and Wilfrid did what any other sensible fellow would have done similarly situated, in which pleasing business the lamp became accidentally extinguished.

“There now! You yourself must re-light it,” she said, thrusting a tinder-box into his hand. “I cannot stay longer,” and pushing him into the room, she closed the door upon him and hurried away.

Wilfrid’s first act on finding himself alone was to lock the door, his practice always at a strange inn; his next, the room being in total darkness, was to obtain a light, a somewhat difficult feat, owing to the dampness of the rag in the tinder-box. Not till after the lapse of ten minutes did he succeed in producing a flame sufficient for the rekindling of the lamp.

While kneeling on the floor at this task he more than once fancied that he caught a sound like a sigh, and at the moment of obtaining the light he became convinced of the reality of the sounds.

A regular succession of light breathings gave audible proof that he was not the only person in the room. Rising to his feet and holding the lamp on high, Wilfrid looked about him, and discovered that the breathings came from a bed a little distance off. Curtains hanging around the bed prevented him from seeing the sleeper. It was clear that through some strange blunder Nadia had shown him to the wrong room.

Then——

“By Jove!” muttered Wilfrid.

His eyes had fallen upon a startling sight—startling, that is, in the sense of being unexpected.

There, orderly disposed upon a chair by the dressing-table was a pile of fair undergarments, while beneath the same chair there peeped forth a pair of satin shoes formed only for the smallest of feet.

The person behind the curtains was not a man!

Fortunately Wilfrid’s movements had been so noiseless as not to disturb the occupant. His obvious course, then, was immediate retirement.

He was on the point of stealing off when his eye was caught by sparkles of light coming from a jewel-case that lay upon the dressing-table. It did not require the knowledge of a lapidary to pronounce that the rich gems and the wrought gold represented a very large amount of money. The owner was, obviously a lady of wealth, and—Shrine of Venus!—there could not be a doubt about it; he was standing in the very bed-chamber of the fair boyarine!

Nadia, paying too much attention, perhaps, to Wilfrid’s talking, had not noticed that instead of ascending to the third landing and taking the corridor that led from that, she had mistakenly stopped and turned when upon the second landing, with the result that Wilfrid, instead of being in the room immediately above that of the boyarine, was in the boyarine’s room itself!

“What would the Ugly One with the spurs and moustaches think,” muttered Wilfrid grimly, “if he knew of my presence here?”

The sooner he withdrew the better. He had already been in the room more than ten minutes. If Nadia should recall her error, and should come flying back with clamour, the issue might be awkward, both for the lady and himself.

Just as he was about to make for the door his ear detected a movement in the bed.

His heart almost leaped to his throat. Some instinct told him that the movement was not an unconscious stirring in slumber; the lady was wide awake, and remembering that she had gone to sleep in the dark, was doubtless puzzling herself to account for the light now shining through her bed-curtains.

His first impulse, to extinguish the light, was checked by the thought that the fear occasioned by the sudden darkness might elicit a scream from her. Better to stand still and be openly seen than to glide, a terrifying black shape, from the room.

A glance toward the bed showed him a hand coming forth from between the curtains—a hand as white as the sleeve of the nightdress that clothed the arm of the wearer.

The drapery parted, revealing a beautiful face and figure—the living original of the miniature!

Overwhelmed with surprise Wilfrid stood, as breathless and as still as if he had suddenly fallen under a spell of enchantment.

He had loved her from the first moment of setting eyes upon her portrait, but now the actual sight of the living princess increased that love tenfold. Could it be true that he, and he only, held a place in her heart, and that for a space of more than eight years? If eight years previously in Saxony he had exercised so powerful an impression upon her girlish imagination, she should surely know him again? But though he hoped and looked for it, she betrayed no sign of recognition. Indeed, the only emotion expressed in her widening eyes was wonder.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

Her voice—and one more soft and musical had never fallen upon Wilfrid’s ear—seemed to have the effect of breaking the spell that had held him.

He bowed with all the grace he was capable of.

“I am an English traveller, a midnight arrival, who has been erroneously led to believe that this was his bedroom. I cannot sufficiently express my regret at having disturbed you in this unceremonious fashion.”

There was about Wilfrid that air of good breeding that marked him as a gentleman, and gave to his words the stamp of truth.

Her suspicions, if she had had any, were gone in a moment.

“Then, sir, please to withdraw,” she said, in a tone of gentle dignity.

“At once,” replied Wilfrid, turning to the door, “trusting I may be permitted to pay my respects to you in the morning, and to apologise more at length.”

Just the faintest shade of fear passed over her face.

“No, no, you must not do that! As you love your life keep this meeting a secret! I speak with good reason. Go! But stay—one moment. Your name?”

“Wilfrid, Lord Courtenay.”

A faint cry escaped the Princess as Wilfrid so held the lamp that its light fell clearly upon his face.

She knew at least his name, if she did not recognise him; that much was certain. Equally certain was it that his name or his presence filled her with some deep emotion. She caught her breath; her colour came and went. If these symptoms were due to love it was a love mingled with dismay, and the dismay seemed to predominate.

Though prudence told Wilfrid that it was high time to go, he could not resist the temptation of lingering to ask,

“Have we met before?”

“Once,” answered the Princess in a softened voice, “and once only, when you saved me from death!”

It must have been in his sleep, then, for he had no recollection of it! Adventures he had known in plenty, but to save the life of either woman or girl was a pleasure that had never yet fallen to his lot, and he said so.

The Princess gave a half-smile.

“It was an event so strange that I do not wonder at your failing to connect me with it.”

A more puzzling statement, this, since the very strangeness of the affair should surely be an additional reason for stamping it upon his memory.

As Wilfrid looked intently at her in the vain attempt to discover her meaning, he saw an awful change pass over her face. Dilated eyes, lips drawn apart, and cheeks perfectly bloodless—all showed her to be seized by a sudden sense of fear.

A moment more and Wilfrid, too, felt fear, not on his own account, but on hers.

A murmuring of voices and the sound of footsteps were audible on the other side of the bedroom door. A little crowd was congregating in the corridor without. What was the cause of the gathering? His striking of the flint had been accompanied by very little noise. The voices of both the Princess and himself had been scarcely loud enough to penetrate beyond the room. Why, then, was attention becoming drawn to the Princess’s bed-chamber? Had Nadia become aware of her error? Was she outside, testifying to others that she had mistakenly conducted an English traveller to this chamber? Had the Princess’s retinue gone to the bedroom intended as his and found it empty? Had they then decided to search the Princess’s bed-chamber? The discovery of a man at the dead of night in the bedroom of a lady, who had let fifteen minutes elapse without raising an alarm, would certainly place her in a compromising situation.

The confused murmur outside ceased. Then came a gentle tapping upon the panels of the door.

Now if Wilfrid had followed his own impulse he would at once have opened the door, and explained the matter precisely as it had happened, being of opinion that the truthful way is always the best way, but on glancing at the Princess he saw her with her finger upon her lips, which action he took as a sign that he was not to speak.

In the silence of that trying moment he could almost hear the beating of her heart.

The knocking was renewed, being followed this time by a turning of the handle and a pressure against the door, which did not yield since, as previously stated, Wilfrid upon entering had locked it.

“What is it?” cried the Princess, striving to subdue the tremors of her voice.

“Did not your highness call us?” was the reply, delivered in a deep bass voice, which Wilfrid immediately recognised to be that of Prince Ouvaroff, or, as Nadia had impolitely called him, the Ugly One.

The voice came both as a surprise and a pleasure to Wilfrid—a pleasure, because his present position would now admit an explanation, certain to be received by the Prince, who would not be likely to impute dishonourable motives to his old friend. Indeed, Wilfrid was almost on the point of answering, but thought it more prudent to await the pleasure of the Princess.

“I did not call, Prince. I would have rung had I wanted anything.”

Wilfrid groaned in spirit. The deed was done. If the Princess were not compromised before she certainly was now, and by her own action. Her words were tantamount to saying that nothing unusual was occurring—in effect, a tacit denial of his presence.

“But had you rung we could not have come to you,” said a feminine voice, belonging evidently to one of the Princess’s maids, “since your Highness has locked the door against us.”

“A wise precaution in a strange house. I did not call, nor do I want anything. Return to bed, silly ones. You—you are interrupting my rest.”

There was a brief whispering, followed by the sound of receding footsteps, and though all became silent in the corridor again, Wilfrid was troubled with the horrible suspicion that the speakers had merely moved off to some distant place of observation, there to wait for his appearing. If so, how was it possible for him to escape discovery?

The only other exit from the room lay through the window, but Wilfrid was well aware that Russian windows are, at the beginning of winter, so firmly secured against the cold without as to be opened with extreme difficulty. Moreover, if he should succeed in crawling through the lattice and in dropping to the ground below—honourable doings for a Courtenay!—his footprints in the snow would betray him. And how was he to re-enter the inn without attracting notice? It was impossible for him to remain all night in the bed-chamber, even if the Princess, yielding to necessity, should permit it, for in the morning discovery must ensue upon the entering of the maids. He could leave only by the door, but again came the disquieting thought that there might be watchers in the corridor without, determined to see the end of the matter, even though they should have to wait all night. If this last were the case, then each moment of his stay would but deepen—nay, confirm—suspicion.

He was still standing in the place where he had first stood after lighting the lamp, hesitating to stir lest the moving of the light or the sound of his feet should lead to his betrayal. But now the Princess beckoned him to approach. She wished to speak, and for obvious reasons to speak in a whisper. Wilfrid moved forward in silence. The Princess pointed to a chair by the bedside, and Wilfrid, sitting down, placed the lamp upon the dressing-table, and bent his head to listen.

What the Princess said was almost inaudible to Wilfrid: it was more by the motion of her lips than by the actual sound proceeding from them that he understood her to say:—

“I said what I did”—alluding to her implied denial of his presence, surely a pardonable evasion considering the circumstances—“to save you from being cut to pieces before my eyes—your fate if found here. Do not go—till—till they have had time to fall asleep again.”

With that she sank back upon her pillow.

To be sitting by the bedside of a fair and youthful princess was a very charming situation, but it had its drawbacks. Should discovery ensue, then, unless the Princess had the nature of an angel, how could she ever forgive the man who had made her innocence appear as guilt? From her, whose love he was so anxious to win, what could he now look for but resentment? The endearing impression made on her mind by his saving of her life, though confessedly he had no recollection of the event, would now be completely effaced by this unfortunate blundering into the wrong room at night.

As Baranoff’s face, with its sneering smile, rose vividly before him, Wilfrid turned cold at the thought that he had done the very thing the minister had wanted him to do! Should this affair come to his ears how he would triumph in the Princess’s shame! How quick he would be to reveal it to the world! Wilfrid recalled his words: “Death at the hands of the State for the Princess as well as for her lover.” That there was truth in this utterance seemed evidenced by the words of the Princess herself; that he would be slain before her eyes if found in her bed-chamber. Such a fear spoke but too plainly of her position, for if she were powerless to prevent her retinue from butchering him, it was clear that she was not really their mistress. She was, in fact, a sort of honourable prisoner of State, free to travel if she chose, but attended by an escort, told off to watch for any suspicious act. In forecasting his probable doom she had not touched upon her own. Was it possible that he was really bringing upon her a like fate?

He ventured to steal a glance at her face. How beautiful it was, with its soft violet eyes shaded by long dark lashes? Whatever may have been the arrangement of her hair earlier in the evening, it now lay upon the pillow like a bright aureole around her face, one golden tress twining about her white throat like a vine tendril clasping a marble column.

If ever woman had cause to be angry with Wilfrid that woman was this princess, and yet her face betrayed not the faintest sign of resentment; on the contrary, there was something in her look assuring him that, come what might, she would be the last person in the world to reproach him for an act unwittingly committed, a forgiving tenderness of spirit on her part that, while it endeared her the more to Wilfrid, at the same time enhanced, rather than lessened, his despair.

Half an hour passed without a word spoken on either side. Then the Princess bent forward till her golden hair was so close to his own that he could feel her warm breath on his cheek.

“Lord Courtenay,” she said in the faintest of whispers, “before you go, a few words. You have heard me called ‘Highness.’ Do you know my name and rank?”

“I regret to answer no,” replied Wilfrid, speaking in a tone similarly subdued.

As she did not seek to enlighten him it was clear that she preferred to remain unknown.

“You will keep this meeting a secret?”

Wilfrid bowed assent.

“When you have found the right room let me entreat you to remain there till after ten in the morning.”

Ten o’clock, he remembered, was the time arranged for the resumption of her journey.

“My meaning is that if a certain one among my suite should learn that you have passed a night at this inn, the consequences to me may be,” she hesitated as to the choice of a word, finally selecting “hurtful.”

Wilfrid had no doubt that the person she meant was Ouvaroff, and for the moment he felt that he would like to do for Ouvaroff what he had done for the Abbé Spada.

“Your Highness, say no more. I stir not from my room till after the hour named.”

“What other persons besides myself know that you are here?”

“The innkeeper and his daughter, but for their own sake they will not speak of me to your suite. There is my yamchik, too, but they will take good care to keep him out of the way.”

Though the Princess had hinted that it was time for him to go, she did not seek to hasten his departure.

“Why do you, an Englishman, travel in Russia at a time so perilous as the present?” An embarrassing question, but before he had time to consider what answer he should give, the Princess spoke again.

“Lord Courtenay,” she said in a grave earnest tone, “I am glad in one sense to have met you, for I can give you a warning. It has become known to me that your life is not safe in Russia. Leave the country with all speed. Take another name; assume a disguise; forge a fresh passport; go anywhere rather than to St. Petersburg, where you have an enemy who will not spare you.”

“You allude to Count Baranoff?”

“To one greater than Baranoff.”

But when Wilfrid asked for the name of this person, the Princess shrank back with a strange and troubled look, so that Wilfrid refrained from repeating the question, for he could very well guess who was meant, though why she should hesitate at naming him was a mystery.

One greater than Baranoff? Who but the Czar could be greater than the Czar’s minister? And the cause of the Czar’s enmity was doubtless to be found in the defeat at Berlin of his policy, a defeat due to Wilfrid alone. And yet it seemed improbable that Baranoff would have the courage to tell the story of his own cowardice and flight. It might be, however, that he had related the matter in such a way as to exculpate himself, representing that his triumph would have been certain but for a secret emissary of Pitt’s, Lord Courtenay by name, who, insinuating himself into the confidences of Frederick William, had induced that monarch to side with Great Britain.

The warning given by the Princess more than ever convinced Wilfrid that his journey to St. Petersburg was likely to end in his arrest. Yet turn back he would not, now that he had once met with the Princess, whose whole manner showed that she moved in an environment of suspicion and peril, from which, if possible, he would deliver her.

“You will not go to St. Petersburg?” she said in a soft pleading tone that vibrated to his heart.

Wilfrid felt that to say he was bent on going would but increase the look of sadness on her fair face. He therefore temporised.

“I will think over the matter.”

“I have warned you. If you will not take my warning you are lost. I have no more to say,” she added—words that Wilfrid interpreted as a hint to go.

“Your Highness,” he said, rising, “you know my name. Will you not favour me with yours ere I go?”

She shook her bright flowing hair in tantalising fashion.

“What good will it do you?” she said with a sad smile. “Let me remain unknown. Now go, and Heaven watch over you!”

“And over you, too, Princess!”

Wilfrid bowed, took up the lamp, and walked to the door. Arrived there, he cast one last lingering glance at the Princess. She was sitting up in bed watching him, her hand pressed to her side as if to repress the accelerated beating of her heart. Was its quickening due to fear, or to love, or to a mingling of both?

He extinguished his lamp, conscious that even in the darkness the Princess’s eyes were upon him.

He cautiously turned the key of the door, the steel tongue of the lock moved back almost silently. Wilfrid paused a few moments, fearing lest the sound, faint though it was, should have attracted attention.

Finding that all remained still, he ventured to open the door and to look forth. By aid of a faint light shed by a lamp hung from the ceiling, he saw that the corridor was empty. His trained hearing caught neither the hasty movement of feet nor the sound of closing doors; nothing whatever occurred to suggest that any of the Princess’s retinue had been on the watch.

Thus assured, he stepped out into the passage, quietly closing the door behind him.

It was a new thing for Wilfrid to be stealing along a corridor at night like a thief, fearful of being seen or heard—an altogether humiliating experience, made endurable only by the thought that it was necessary for the honour, the safety, perhaps even the life, of the Princess. Twenty paces—he had a reason for taking accurate measurement—brought him to a landing, whence a short staircase led to the floor above, where was a corridor, similar in all respects to the one he had just left.

Moving forward twenty paces along this, Wilfrid paused before a certain door.

“Directly above the Princess’s room, Nadia said. Then this should be it. Now, pray Heaven, I am not disturbing some other person’s sleep.”

He cautiously opened the door, and quietly exploring his way through the darkness, reached the bed. It was empty. Re-lighting the lamp he found himself in a room whose appointments seemed to show that it was intended for the use of a male visitor.

Whether or not it was the room that Nadia had meant for him mattered little; he was not going to look for any other; so locking the door he went to bed, and was soon sound asleep.