Olga Romanoff | Page 6

the world, a catastrophe which
no human means could avert, and beneath which human strength and
genius could only bow with resignation.
"By what spirit he was inspired when he uttered the prophecy, it is not
for us to say. But before you put it aside as an old man's dream, let me
ask you to remember, that he who uttered it was a man who was able to
plan the destruction of one civilisation, and to prepare the way for
another and a better.
"Such a man, standing midway between the twin mysteries of life and
death, might well see that which is hidden from our grosser sight. But
whether the prophecy itself shall prove true or false, it shall be well for
you and for your children's children if you and they shall receive the
lesson that it teaches as true.
"If, in the days that are to come, the world shall be overwhelmed with a
desolation that none shall escape, will it not be better that the end shall
come and find men doing good rather than evil? As you now set the
peoples whom you govern in the right or the wrong path, so shall they
walk.
"This is the lesson of all the generations that have gone before us, and it
shall also be true of those that are to come after us. As the seed is, so is
the harvest; therefore see to it that you, who are now the free rulers of
the nations, so discharge the awful trust and responsibility which is thus
laid upon you, that your children's children shall not, perhaps in the
hour of Humanity's last agony, rise up and curse your memory rather
than bless it. I have spoken!"

CHAPTER II.
A CROWNLESS KlNG.
LATE in the evening of the same day two of the President's audience --

the only two who had heard his words with anger and hatred instead of
gratitude and joy -- were together in a small but luxuriously-furnished
room, in an octagonal turret rose from one of the angles of a large
house on the southern slope of the heights of Hampstead.
One was a very old man, whose once giant frame was wasted and
shrunken by the slow siege of many years, and on whose withered,
care-lined features death had already set its fatal seal. The other was a
young girl, in all the pride and glory of budding womanhood, and
beautiful with the dark, imperious beauty that is transmitted, like a
priceless heirloom, along a line of proud descent unstained by any drop
of base-born blood.
Yet in her beauty there was that which repelled as well as attracted. No
sweet and gentle woman-soul looked out of the great, deep eyes, that
changed from dusky-violet to the blackness of a starless night as the
sun and shade of her varying moods swept over her inner being. Her
straight, dark brows were almost masculine in their firmness; and the
voluptuous promise of her full, red, sensuous lips was belied by the
strength of her chin and the defiant poise of her splendid head on the
strongly-moulded throat, whose smooth skin showed so dazzlingly
white against the dark purple velvet of the collar of her dress.
It was a beauty to enslave and command rather than to woo and win;
the fatal loveliness of a Cleopatra, a Lucrezia, or a Messalina; a charm
to be used for evil rather than for good. In a few years she would be
such a woman as would drive men mad for the love of her, and, giving
no love in return, use them for her own ends, and cast them aside with a
smile when they could serve her no longer.
The old man was lying on a low couch of magnificent furs against
whose dark lustre the grey pallor of his skin and the pure, silvery
whiteness of his still thick hair and beard showed up in strong contrast.
He had been asleep for the last four hours, resting after the exertion of
going to the cathedral, and the girl was sitting watching him with
anxious eyes, every now and then leaning forward to catch the faint
sound of his slow and even breathing, and make sure that he was still
alive.

A clock in one of the corners of the room chimed a quarter to nine, as
the old man raised his hand to his brow and opened his eyes. They
rested for a moment on the girl's face, and then wandered inquiringly
about the room, as though he expected someone else to be present.
Then he said in a low, weak voice--
"What time is it? Has Serge come yet?"
"No," said the girl, glancing up at the clock; "that was only a quarter