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 some strong motive." And her eyes searched my face for the truth.

"Eccentricity has never yet been denied to us."

"Is it in your case eccentricity—only?"

"I am also half a Roumanian," I said, repeating the answer I had given in the morning to Zoiloff.

"And the Roumanians are all but Russians."

"Is not the Princess Christina a Roumanian?" I retorted. "And also of the Russian Party here?"

"Do you think that?" she asked quickly, turning the battery of her eyes full on me again.

"What time or means have I had to learn how to distinguish between appearances and facts?"

She laughed—a very silvery, sweet laugh.

"You fence as cleverly with your tongue as with your sword, Count. What do you want to know?"

"Nothing that cannot be told me voluntarily, mademoiselle."

"Why do we all trust you instinctively?" she asked. A quiet feminine thrust.

"I am happy if you do," I parried; and at the reply she shrugged her shoulders, and a shadow of impatience crossed her expressive face.

There was a pause, in which she looked down and played with her fan.

"We wish to trust you entirely," she said next, in a low, earnest voice. "The Princess wishes it." A swift glance shot up to notice the effect of this.

"I have no more earnest wish in life than to serve the Princess," I declared, the words coming from my heart.

"To serve her is to serve the cause of freedom and the cause of Bulgaria."

"Freedom as the Russians interpret it?"