she had before checked now passed beyond control and lighted her face rarely.
"You must not press me for my reasons," I said quickly; and the light in her eyes may have reflected the thought behind it, for again the colour mantled her cheeks.
"Then you will not help me?" she said in a low voice that witched me.
"You? With my life!"
The passion in my tone made her cast down her eyes, till, with a still deeper colour on her face, she lifted them and said gently:
"Forgive me; I was but testing you. And if you blame me, think what store I may set upon an assurance of fidelity that is purely personal to me. Call it caprice if you will, a mere woman's caprice, that I should thus seek to probe your real thoughts and resolves."
"There was no need to test me where you were concerned," I replied; and again the earnestness of my tone appeared to embarrass her. In the short silence that followed I sat with but the loosest rein upon the hopes and thoughts that were so much to me.
"No; the Duke Sergius does not come into the scheme as we plan it," she said; "and I thought indeed that what Mademoiselle Broumoff told you would have made you understand this. I would do much for this country; and if it were necessary that I should marry him—which, thank God, it is not—I might force myself to go even to that extreme. But in my life there can be no thought of marriage. I should be baser than the base if, having taken this charge upon me, I should ever turn from it by any thought of myself."
