The Game and the Candle Part 29

Long before Stanief reached his goal, Allard had arrived at the palace.

No less excitement reigned there. Without need of explanation, Allard was hurried to the Emperor, questioned and congratulated on every side.

He met Adrian in the hall, and at sight of his messenger, blackened with smoke, hatless, still pale with the strain of those perilous moments, the Emperor sprang forward and caught his arm.

"Feodor?" he cried fiercely, his voice ringing through the lofty corridors. "Speak, speak; where is Feodor?"

"Sire, he has returned to madame the Grand d.u.c.h.ess."

"Safe? You are not deceiving me, he is safe?"

"He is unhurt; he destroyed the bomb before it exploded," Allard explained incoherently. "His hands are cut, no more."

Adrian dropped the other's arm and drew back; for hours Allard felt the bruise of that feverish grasp.

"To madame," he repeated.

"Sire, he ordered me to bring an account of the affair to your Imperial Majesty. He can be sent for," Allard suggested eagerly, catching a daring hope from the apparent emotion.

Adrian favored him with a saber-keen glance.

"Why should I wish to see him?" he demanded harshly. "If he is uninjured, very good; we will send our congratulations. You are exhausted, Monsieur Allard; go to your apartments and recover yourself.

Alisof," he turned upon the group of listeners, "you will inform the chief of police that I shall replace him next week if he completes this exhibition of inefficiency by letting the a.s.sa.s.sin escape. And when he captures the man, he will report to me, not to the Regent."

Scarlet enough now under the streaks of grime, Allard moved aside to let him pa.s.s. All his self-control could not smother the blazing indignation in his gray eyes. But Adrian brushed past without regarding him, and went alone into the room beyond.

CHAPTER XVI

FIRE LILIES

Through the uproar, between the crowding people, Stanief at last gained his own hall and partly quelled the confusion by his mere presence.

"Tell madame that I have returned and will visit her as soon as this smoke is removed," was his first direction on setting foot upon the steps.

But when he reached the head of the great staircase a white figure flashed down the hall to meet him.

"Monseigneur, monseigneur," moaned the silver voice. Before all the household, and Adrian's guards, Iria clutched Stanief's stained and blackened coat with small, eager hands and fainted on his breast.

"Stand back!" the master commanded as a score of dismayed attendants rushed forward and the Countess Marya sprang toward her mistress. And lifting her easily in his arms, he carried her back to the cream-tinted boudoir left so shortly before and so nearly left for ever.

On the way the gold-and-topaz eyes opened, but she did not protest or move until Stanief set her down.

"John is safe," he said, with a tenderness that had long pa.s.sed beyond jealousy. "Did they not tell you, dear?"

Iria caught the chair beside her.

"You," she panted. "They said you were hurt. Oh, your hands--"

"It is nothing."

"It is, to me. I thought you would die and never know that I loved you so, monseigneur."

"Iria!" he cried.

She held out her hands to him with pa.s.sionate innocence and grief, the loose sleeves falling back to her shoulders with the gesture.

"I do, I do. Never say those things to me again, never leave me like that."

Dazzled, incredulous, he swept her to him, almost rough in his unbearable doubt and joy.

"And John? What of John?"

"You knew--"

"Knew? Child, you betrayed yourself the first time you spoke of him, the first time I saw you together. Why should I blame you for no fault of yours? How could I blame him, who never even guessed your thought? I never wondered at your choice; only, give me the truth now."

"But I love you," she said. "Monsieur Allard; I never thought of him like that after our wedding-day. You were so calm, so strong, I just rested with you and found no room for any other. On the voyage from Spain, I imagined somehow that Monsieur Allard was you, that you had come secretly to meet me, and so I almost taught myself to care for him.

No more than that it was."

Closer he held her, searching the face of rose-and-pearl with his splendid, lonely eyes.

"Love of mine, make no mistake. I want you; my dear, I have wanted you so bitterly long, and you have shrunk from me. You care now, Iria?"

"I have always cared, only I never knew until last year. Since then I have hidden from you because I feared you would see; because I never dreamed _you_ cared."

With a tinkling crash the silver pin slipped from her hair, like a golden serpent the heavy coil unwound and fell over his arm, draping them both with rippling silk as he stooped to kiss her quivering lips.

After a moment she stirred slightly, her head still on his arm as she looked up.

"Now you will take me with you?" she breathed, in delicious content.

"Now you will not leave me with the Emperor, Feodor?"

For the first time in many weeks Stanief laughed, reveling in their knit gaze.

"Poor Adrian! How can he punish his rebellious Regent, since he must leave me you? In a garden of fire my lily has opened. Where shall we go, Iria, on our golden journey? To your perfumed South?"

"May I choose?"

"You may command."

"Then take me to your own old castle in the hills. Shall it not be our home?"

"Hush, you have spoken a word I never knew; let me listen to it for a moment."

Outside the city roared unheeded, unheard.