Each day in the presence of this most alluring of princesses forged new fetters for the susceptible Duke, until one day she announced to him, with tears streaming down her pretty cheeks, that she had received a letter recalling her to Persia—­to be married.  The crucial hour had arrived.  The Duke, reduced to despair, begs her to accept his own exalted hand in marriage, vowing that, if she refuses, he will “shut himself up in a cloister”; and is only restored to a measure of sanity when she promises to consider his offer.

When Hornstein, the Duke’s ambassador to Vienna, appears on the scene, full of suspicion and doubts, she makes an equally easy conquest of him.  She announces to his gratified ears her wish to become a Catholic; flatters him by begging him to act as her instructor in the creed that is so dear to him; and she reveals to him “for the first time” the true secret of her identity.  She is really, she says, the Princess of Azov, heiress to vast estates, which may come to her any day; and the first use she intends to make of her millions is to fill the empty coffers of the Limburg duchy.

Hornstein is not only converted; he becomes as ardent an admirer as his master, the Duke.  The Princess takes her place as the coming Duchess of Limburg, much to the disgust of his subjects, who show their feelings by hissing when she appears in public.  Her hour of triumph has arrived—­when, like a bolt from the blue, an anonymous letter comes to Hornstein revealing the story of her past doings in several capitals of Europe, and branding her as an “impostor.”

For a time the Duke treats these anonymous slanders with scorn.  He refuses to believe a word against his divinity, the beautiful, high-born woman who is to crown his life’s happiness and, incidentally, to save him from bankruptcy.  But gradually the poison begins to work, supplemented as it is by the suspicions and discontent of his subjects.  At last he summons up courage to ask an explanation—­to beg her to assure him that the charges against her are as false as he believes them.

She listens to him with quiet dignity until he has finished, and then replies, with tears in her eyes, that she is not unprepared for disloyalty from a man who is so obviously the slave of false friends and of public opinion, but that she had hoped that he would at least have some pity and consideration for a woman who was about to become the mother of his child.  This unexpected announcement, with its appeal to his manhood, proves more eloquent than a world of proofs and protestations.  The Duke’s suspicions vanish in face of the news that the woman he loves is to become the mother of his child, and in a moment he is at her knees imploring her pardon, and uttering abject apologies.  He is now more deeply than ever in her toils, ready to defy the world in defence of the Princess he adores and can no longer doubt.