Dark and starless as was the night, they could nevertheless see that not a single pontoon remained in the place where the bridge had lately been. Nature had played havoc with man’s work. Between the Citadel and the opposite bank intervened a broad expanse of black water, upon whose rapid current ghostly bergs tumbled and crashed, danced and whirled, as if in glee at the destruction wrought. Here and there, in mid-stream and clinging to fragments of timber, human forms could be heard uttering cries for help. The brothers looked at each other with pale faces, and eyes full of baffled rage. The catastrophe had put an end to the proposed visit to the Michaelhof. No boat could live on such a tide. For hours, and it might be days, the pair would be cut off from the Imperial quarter as effectually as if they were in far-off Siberia. “No crossing to-night,” said Loris. “Now, Pahlen, do as you list. There is none to stay your hand.” CHAPTER XI “THOU SHALT BRUISE HIS HEEL” Upon the departure of General Benningsen from the Embassy, Pauline de Vaucluse was left, a victim to troubling thoughts. Dear to her father’s heart was the Franco-Russian Alliance, and yet she, his daughter and _confidante_, had been secretly working to bring it to nought; and all to no purpose, so it seemed. To be a successful traitress is bad enough, but to be an unsuccessful one——! In too melancholy a mood to seek Wilfrid’s society again, she left her father to entertain him; and, on the plea of a headache, retired to her own room, wondering what the morrow would bring forth. Apart from the uneasiness arising from the loss of the incriminatory document, she was troubled with a feeling of self-reproach, due to an indefinable something in Wilfrid’s manner. It had not taken her long to discover that he was one to whom deception of any kind was distasteful, his character in this respect affording a striking contrast with her own. If any one had reproached her with duplicity, she would have asked with a smile how it was possible to succeed in this world without lying; but now, as she recalled the grave air with which Wilfrid had received the hints that she was secretly working in opposition to her father, she grew first uneasy and then angry; though why she should let Wilfrid’s opinion trouble her was a question that found no answer in her mind. There the fact was: her attitude towards her father, now, for the first time, appeared in an unfilial and hateful light, and it was mainly Wilfrid that had made it look so.