Read Ebook: In the Name of a Woman: A Romance by Marchmont Arthur W Murray Smith D Illustrator

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Ebook has 1789 lines and 72801 words, and 36 pages

, every word of it."

"No looking back, that is the spirit I honour!" I exclaimed, infected by their enthusiasm, and thinking of the Princess.

"A toast!" cried Zoiloff, jumping to his feet, his eyes flashing, and his rough, rugged features aglow, as he raised his glass on high. "May the hand that holds this glass blight and rot if it ever falters or turns from the righteous cause--In the Name of a Woman."

"Amen to that," said I earnestly, as Spernow and I repeated his words, and finished solemnly together--"In the Name of a Woman."

"I have never dared before to be enthusiastic, but you have inspired me, Count. We have a leader in you who will carry us far, and whom all will come to trust as I do;" and Zoiloff gave me his hand, holding mine in a grip that trembled under his excitement.

There was, however, a source of danger that these two knew nothing of, and I could not tell them--the fear of the Countess Bokara's violence.

My anxiety on the score of General Kolfort's intention to get me out of his way had been removed as the result of the visit of Duke Sergius coupled with what the General had heard from Spernow, and probably from the Princess herself. He did not send for me and I did not seek him, but on the morning following the meeting at my house he put himself in my way as I was returning from my military duties.

We were both on horseback, and I was passing him with a salute, when he reined up his horse and stopped me.

"You have not come to me, Count," he said curtly.

"And do not propose to come, General," I answered in a similar tone.

"I was not wrong in my estimate of you, I find."

"I do not recall it for the moment," said I indifferently.

He looked at me and smiled grimly.

"Good. A little open antagonism to me is your shrewdest course. I understand you. You are what I thought--a very clever young man. And you can assure everyone that you are not pledged to me--openly. I understand you, I say."

"As a well-known judge of men your opinion is flattering, General," I answered ambiguously.

His smile broadened.

And with a salute he passed on, leaving me to digest the irony and hidden meaning of his last words. I rode on thoughtfully to my house. The impression he left on my mind was perhaps just such as he had designed--that the attempt to trick him was indeed like playing with fire on the top of a powder magazine. And I was profoundly uneasy as I thought of what that might mean to the woman whose safety and success were now infinitely more to me than my own.

At my house a surprise was in store for me. A carriage was at the door, and the servants told me that a lady was awaiting me.

I went to the room at once and found the Countess Bokara. She rose with a smile as she held out her hand.

"You look magnificent in your regimentals, Count. And I suppose you have been too busy with your new duties and new friends to think it worth while to see me. And you don't seem over-pleased that I am here now," she added, for my face clouded at the sight of her. She was a bird of ill-omen, as I knew.

"What is your object in honouring me with this informal visit?"

"Informal! Where is the need of formality between you and me?" she asked quickly.

"In Sofia the tongues of gossip run glibly."

"You have soon developed into an authority on the manners of the people here. Spare me your cant, I beg of you. What do you suppose I should care if all the old gossips in the city talked me over till their tongues ached? You ask why I am here. I wish to see you, that is all."

"I am at your service," I answered, with a bow.

"Are you? That's just what I wish to know," she replied, putting a significant meaning to my conventional phrase. "You have not given much evidence of it as yet. I should rather think you have even forgotten your promise to serve me."

"I am, at any rate, ready to listen to you."

She looked at me piercingly during a rather long pause.

"Your thoughts are always shrewd," I returned.

At the reply she looked up and laughed, with such an expression of malignity that it made her face hateful, for all the beauty of her eyes.

"You little know how shrewd this time, Count Benderoff, or you would drop that insipid conventionality, I promise you."

"You are pleased to speak in riddles."

"Yes, because you act them," she retorted, almost fiercely. "But I promise to be plain enough before I leave you. I will drop the one if you will drop the other--but, there, you'll have to, as you'll soon see."

"Well, then, I'll try to make you. You are not generally dull. Tell me plainly, if you can, on what side are you in all these matters? The question is merely to give you a chance of being frank with me, for I know much."

"I seek the same object as yourself--the freedom of Bulgaria."

"Aye. In the Name of a Woman, you mean? You think I do not know your canting phrase."

I was on my guard now, and did not let her see my surprise at her words.

"I have the honour to bear a commission in the Prince's own regiment, as you know," I answered evasively.

"The commission I got for you. Of course I know. But what do you mean by that empty answer? Are you for or against me? For Heaven's sake try to speak frankly! Nothing else will serve either you or me in this." And she stamped her foot with a gesture of impatience.

"So far as our aims are in common, I am with you."

"Do you think an answer like that will satisfy me? I am beginning to understand you; and if my reading is right, you and those with you may well take heed for yourselves."

"I have not come to threaten. I have come to have a clear understanding; that is all. And I will have it," she said, impetuously. "I will give you another chance. What did the Prince say to you when you were with him?"

"For the love of Heaven, man, drop this conventional cant and speak as plainly as you can if you wish. What did he say to you about this mad intention of his to abdicate?"

"Intention to abdicate?" I echoed, as if taken by surprise.

"Which means that he did tell you, and you would now pretend that he did not." And, yielding to a sudden storm of passion, she broke out into a torrent of indignant reproaches of what she termed my breach of trust in not telling her.

I did not interrupt her, and gathered that she had only just heard from the Prince what he had said to me. I understood now the cause of her visit and the reason of her passion.

"As his Highness told me in confidence, I could not betray it," I said as soon as I could get a word in. "He no doubt told you that he laid a charge of secrecy upon me."

"And you did nothing to dissuade him, nothing to stop him from a madly suicidal step. You, who pretend to pose as a disinterested friend of Bulgaria devoted to him and to me! And do you think, knowing me as you do, for all your flippant lip-service to the jargon of conventionality, that I will let this thing be? Do you think that I am so powerless a fool that I cannot stop it? Oh, I am a mad woman when I think of it!" she cried desperately. "It can be stopped and must be--do you hear? must; and you must help me."

"I cannot see how I can help you."

She had risen from her chair and was pacing the room in her anger and now came close to me, and in a tone of concentrated energy and fierceness said:

"The death of that woman Christina will stop it; and in that you can help, aye, and you shall help me." Her face was ablaze with rage and hate as she uttered the Princess's name.

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