"Sire, I have just learned that Baron Dalmorov has had the tact to inform the Princess Iría that I was marrying her under compulsion and against my will. This insult to madame, this falsehood--" "Cousin!" "This falsehood, sire--since, having met the Princess, it is my earnest desire to have the honor of her hand--this is too much. Baron Dalmorov is your attendant; I request your justice. If it is refused--" "Well, cousin?" Adrian asked mechanically, rather in stupor than challenge at Stanief's words. Stanief's usually veiled glance glinted clear and ice-cold. "Sire, Dalmorov shall account to me now; and I to you later." Allard, familiar with both, bit his lip in an agony of anxiety. For an instant Adrian wavered, then his eyes fell, beaten down by those of his kinsman. "Whatever you wish," he conceded, docilely as Iría could have spoken. "He had no right, no excuse from me. Go bid Dalmorov come here, Allard." The surrender was complete. Relieved and surprised, Allard obeyed, hazarding a guess that the Emperor's own fondness for Iría had influenced the answer. But Adrian had not lived ten months with his Regent without learning more than a childish love of command. He looked up again at the stately figure that towered over him, glittering in the semibarbaric magnificence of dress demanded by etiquette. "Come by me, Feodor," he urged, with a gesture of invitation to the chair at his side. "Thank you, sire," without moving. Adrian surveyed him, then stooped to the first apology of his life, however imperiously spoken. "I never told any one at all of your unwillingness to marry Iría, Feodor. If it is known, it is because you yourself seized every possible delay. Come here; I do not wish Dalmorov to find you standing there." Stanief complied, and Adrian laid a hand on his sleeve. "Then you love Iría, after all?" he asked, with hesitating curiosity. "Love? In twenty-four hours? Hardly, sire; but I guard my own." The young Emperor lifted his head no less proudly. "And so do I, cousin. Dalmorov shall satisfy you." Half an hour after Iría had returned to the suite appointed to her and her mother, she received a visit from Baron Dalmorov--a very different Dalmorov from the malicious, self-confident gentleman of the morning, and who offered her so abject an apology for his mistaken and untrue statement regarding the Grand Duke's attitude, that the Gentle Princess was quite distressed. She sent him away reassured and apparently grateful, then fell to connecting events. Recollecting Stanief's expression during her naïve account and the carriage of his head as he had crossed the reception-hall to Adrian, she had no difficulty in divining the reason for Dalmorov's sudden contrition. But Stanief's strength no longer chilled her with terror; instead she stood with relief behind its shelter.