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 CHAPTER VIII

AT THE PALACE

The next morning I was up early and went for a long ride. It was likely to be a critical day for me, and I had to try and look well ahead to see where I was being carried by the new set of the tide in my affairs.

My conversation with the Princess Christina had had a great effect upon me. For one thing it had made me more resolved than ever to devote myself to her, whatever might be the consequences; but her words of warning, her evident belief that there was danger for me, and above all her pleasure at my declaration of loyalty to her, had roused all my instincts of caution, while they had strengthened my feelings towards her.

She was shrewd, clear-cut in her views of men and things, devoted to the cause of Bulgaria, and openly allied to the Russian party, whose rough and violent methods she had nevertheless so indignantly decried. What then was her object? Was she playing the doubly hazardous game of attempting to use the Russian influence and power for an end opposed to theirs?

That was the only solution I could see. And it was one which I knew must involve her in a course fraught with such peril, that only a woman of iron nerve and implacable will could contemplate it without fear. And yet she was brave enough to take such a course without, so far as I knew, a single man trained in state