As Pauline contrasted the English peer and the Muscovite Czar, a pang of jealousy seized her that Marie should be the chosen of Wilfrid, while she herself, though the chosen of an emperor, could find little joy in the fact. The diadem that had looked so splendid, when viewed from afar, seemed a bauble now that it was well-nigh within her grasp. “What have you been saying to Marie?” said Wilfrid later in the day, on finding himself alone with Pauline. “She is quite grave and pensive.” “She is wondering, perhaps, whether Lord Courtenay’s attentions to her are to be interpreted merely in the light of friendship. Are all Englishmen so cold and tardy in their wooing? You love, and yet you hesitate to say so to her, who would be but too willing to listen.” “It is precisely because I _do_ love her that I hesitate to say it. Her present state of mind is not normal. Supposing that with the recovery of her memory there should come a reversal of her sentiments towards me?” “You are over-scrupulous,” answered Pauline. “A return to her former state should not be so very unfavourable, if she voluntarily kissed you in the Sumaroff Gardens. The fairest woman in Russia is waiting for your love, and by your hesitancy you are adding to her suspense. See, yonder is your Princess taking her way to the woods. Go with her, and on your return let me hear that you have said the words that will gladden her heart.” Wilfrid went off, bent on following this advice, and Pauline, knowing this, watched him, at her heart a pain such as she had never before known. Turning, she saw Dr. Beauvais by her side. “There was a time,” she said to him, “when I hated her, or thought I did; you know for what reason. And now——” “And now?” repeated Beauvais as she paused in her utterance. “And now, during the past month, she has won her way to my heart and this makes my task difficult. I have been telling her of my ambition, and she has been pleading prettily with me to save the Empress Elizavetta from dishonour, little thinking that she was pleading for herself! What a shock when she learns how I have deceived her! when she realises the guilt from which a word of mine could have saved her!” “Her own fault. If blame is to be apportioned, she must take the initial share; for, to her encouragement of Lord Courtenay is due our present imbroglio. We are but helping her onward in the path she entered of her own accord.” “True,” assented Pauline, glad to snatch at any argument in justification of her wrong-doing. “And to-day the goal is in sight, for to-day she entrusts herself and her future to his keeping.” “That’s good,” murmured the doctor. “I have all but completed the arrangements for their departure, and her flight will prevent the Empress Elizavetta from ever returning to her husband.” “The sooner they go the better,” observed Pauline, “or I shall be repenting my share in the plot.”