A little light filtered down through the crevices and betrayed the secrets of that strange refuge in all their amazing simplicity. Here was neither costly furniture nor any adornment whatsoever. A thick carpet of straw, giving flecks of gold wherever the sunlight struck down upon it, had been laid to such a depth that a grown man might have concealed himself therein. A few empty bales stood here and there as though thrown down at hazard; there were coils of rope and great blocks of timber used by the stevedores who loaded the barges. But of the common things of daily life not a trace. No tables, no chairs, neither bed nor blanket adorn this rude habitation. Let a sergeant of police open his lantern there and the tousled straw would answer him in mockery. This, for a truth, had been the case. Little Lois could tell a tale of Cossacks on the barge, even of rifles fired down into the hold, and of a child's heart beating so quickly that she thought she must cry out for very pain of it. But that was before the men were told that the ship belonged to merry Herr Petermann. They went away at once then—to drink the old fellow's beer and to laugh with him.
That had been a terrible day and Lois had never forgotten it. Whenever old Petermann opened thedoor of his office now, she would start and tremble as though a Cossack's hand already touched her shoulder. Sometimes she lay deep down in the straw, afraid to declare herself even though a friend's voice called her. And so it was upon that morning of Alban's visit.
Old Petermann had shut the cabin door behind him and discreetly left the young people together. Seeing little in the deep gloom and his eyes blinking wherever he turned them, Alban stood almost knee-deep in straw and cried Lois' name aloud.
"Lois—where are you, Lois—why don't you answer me?"
She crept from the depths at his very feet and shaking the straw from her pretty hair, she stood upright and put both her hands upon his shoulders.
"I am here, Alb dear, just waiting for you. Won't you kiss me, Alb dear?"
He put his arms about her neck and kissed her at her wish—just as a brother might have kissed a sister in the hour of her peril.
"I came at once, Lois," he said, "of course I did not understand that it would be like this. Why are you here? Whatever has happened—what does it all mean? Will you not teach me to understand, Lois?"
"Sit by my side, Alb dear, sit down and listen to me. I want you to know what your friends have been doing. Oh, I have been so lonely, so frightened, and I don't deserve that. You know that my father is in prison, Alb—the Count told you that?"
"I heard it before I left England, Lois. You did not answer my letters?"
"I was ashamed to, dear. That was the first thing they taught me at the school—to be ashamed to write to you until you would not be ashamed to read my letters. Can't you understand, Alb? Wasn't I right to be ashamed?"
She buried her head upon his breast and put a little hot hand into his own. A great tenderness toward her filled his whole being and brought a sense of happiness very foreign to him lately. How gentle and kindly this little waif of fortune had ever been. And how even those few weeks of a better schooling had improved her. She had shed all the old vulgarities—she was just a simple schoolgirl as he would have wished her to be.
"We are never right to be ashamed before those who love us," Alban said kindly; "you did not write to me and how was I to know what had happened? Of course, your father told you what I had been doing and why I went away from Union Street? It was all his kindness. I know it now and I have come to Russia to thank him—when he is free. That won't be very long now that I have found you. They were frightened of you, Lois—they thought you were going to betray their secrets to the Revolutionary party. I knew that you would not do so—I said so all along."
She looked up at him with glowing eyes, and putting her lips very close to his ear she said:
"I loved you, Alb—I never could have told them while I loved you—not even to save my father, and God knows how much I love him. Did not they say that you were very happy with Mr. Gessner? Therewould have been no more happiness if I had told them."
"And that is what kept you silent, Lois?"
She would not answer him, but hiding her face again, she asked him a question which surprised him greatly.
"Do you know why the police wished to arrest me, Alb dear?"
"How could I know that, Lois?"
"It was the Count who told them to do so. He is only deceiving you, dear. He does not want to release my father and will never do so. If I were in prison too, he thinks that Mr. Gessner would be quite safe. Do not trust the Count if you would help us. My people understand him and they will punish him some day. He has done a great wrong to many in Warsaw, and he deserves to be punished. You must remember this, dear, when he promises my father's freedom. He is not telling you the truth—he is only asking you to punish me."
"But, Lois, what have you done, what charge can they bring against a little schoolgirl?"
"I am my father's daughter," she said proudly, "that is why they would punish me. Oh, you don't know, dear. Even the little children are criminals in Warsaw. My father escaped from Saghalen and I have no right to live in Russia. When he sent me to school here, I did not come under my own name, they called me Lois Werner and believed I was a German. Then my people heard that Count Sergius wished to have me arrested, and they took me away from the school and brought me here. Herr Petermann is one of myfather's oldest friends. He has saved a great many who would be in prison but for his kindness. We can trust Herr Petermann, dear—he will never betray us."
Alban understood, but he had no answer ready for her. All that she had told him filled him with unutterable contempt toward the men he had but lately considered as his patrons and his friends. The polished, courtly Sergius, his master Richard Gessner—to what duplicity had they not stooped, nay, to what treachery? For they had sent him into Russia, not to befriend this child, but to put the ultimate shame of a Russian prison upon her—the cell, the lash, the unnamable infamy. As in a flash he detected the whole conspiracy and laid it bare. He, Alban Kennedy, had been chosen as their instrument—he had been sent to Poland to condemn this little friend of the dreadful years to the living death in a Russian prison. The blood raced in his veins at the thought. Perhaps for the first time in his life he knew the meaning of the word anger.
"Lois," he exclaimed presently, "if Mr. Gessner does not set your father free, I myself will tell your people. That is the message I am going to send to him to-day. Count Sergius will not lie to me again—I shall tell him so when I return."
She started up in wild alarm.
"You must not do it—I forbid it," she cried, closing her white arms about his neck as though to protect him already from his enemies. "Oh, my dear, you do not know the Russian people, you do not know what it means to stand against the police here and have themfor your enemies. Mr. Gessner is their friend. The Government would do a great deal to serve him—my father says so. If Count Sergius heard that you had met me, we should both be in prison this night—ah, dear God, what a prison, what suffering—and I have seen it myself, the women cowering from the lash, the men beaten so that they cut the flesh from their faces. That's what happens to those who go against the Government, dear Alb—but not to you because you love me."
She clung to him hysterically, for this long vigil had tried her nerves and the shadow of discovery lay upon her always. It had been no surprise to her to find Alban in Warsaw, for the Revolutionary Committee in London had informed her friends by cable on the very day that Count Sergius had left. She knew exactly how he had come, where he had stopped, and when to seek him out. But now that his arms were about her, she dreaded a new separation and was almost afraid to release his hand from hers.
"You will not leave me, Alban," she said—a new dignity coming to her suddenly as though some lesson, not of the school, but of life, had taught it to her—"you will take me to London with you—yes, yes, dear, as your servant. That is what my friends wish, they have thought it all out. I am to go as your servant and you must get a passport for me—for Lois Werner, and then if you call me by my own name no one will know. There we can see Mr. Gessner together and speak of my father. I will promise him that his secret shall never be known. He will trust me, Alban, because I promise him."
Alban stooped and kissed her upon the lips.
"No," he said, "the work must be done here in Russia, Lois. I am called to do it and I go now. Let me find you at the same time to-morrow, and I will tell you what I have done. God bless you, Lois. It is happiness to be with you again."
Their lips met, their arms unclasped reluctantly. A single tap upon the panel of the cabin brought that merry old fellow, Herr Petermann, to open to them. Alban told him in a sentence what had happened and hastened back to the hotel.
Count Sergius was a little more than uneasy when Alban returned—he was suspicious. A highly trained agent of Government himself, he rarely permitted any circumstance, however trifling, to escape him; and this circumstance of tardiness was not trifling.
"He has met the girl," the argument went, "and she is detaining him with a fine story of her wrongs. He may learn that we have tricked him and that would be troublesome. Certainly I was a fool not to have had him watched—but, then, his first night in Warsaw and he a stranger! We shall make up for lost time at once. I will see the Chief and give instructions. A dove does not go but once to the nest. We will take wings ourselves next time."
By which it will be perceived that he blamed himself for having lost a great opportunity and determined not to do so a second time. His whole purpose in coming to Warsaw had been to track down Boriskoff's daughter and to hand her over to the police. This he owed to his employers, the Government, and to his friend, Richard Gessner—than whom none would pay a better price for the service. And when it were done, then he imagined that nothing in the world would be easier than to excuse himself to this amiable lad and to take himback to England without any loss of time whatever. In all a pretty plan, lacking only the finer judgment to discern the strength of the enemy's force and not to despise them.
Alban entered the sitting-room just as the Count had determined to have his breakfast. It was nearly twelve o'clock then and the fierce heat of the day made the streets intolerable. Few people were abroad in the great avenue—there was no repetition of the disturbance of yesterday, nor any Cossack going at a gallop. Down below in the restaurant a bevy of smartly dressed women ate and gossiped to the music of a good Hungarian band. From distant streets there came an echo of gongs and the muffled hum of wheels; the sirens of the steam-tugs screamed incessantly upon the sleepy river.
Whatever the Count's curiosity may have been, he had the wit to hide it when Alban appeared. Adopting a well-feigned tone of raillery, he spoke as men speak when another has been absent and has no good excuse to make.
"I will ask no questions," he said with mock solemnity—"A man who forgets how to breakfast is in a bad way. That is to suppose that you have not breakfasted—ah, forgive me, she makes coffee like a chef, perhaps, and there is no Rhine wine to match the gold of her hair. Let us talk politics, history, the arts—anything you like. I am absolutely discreet, Mr. Kennedy, I have forgotten already that you were late."
Alban drew a chair to the table and began to eat with good appetite. His sense of humor was strong enough to lead him to despise such talk at any time,but to-day it exasperated him. Understanding perfectly well what was in the Count's mind, he was not to be trapped by any such artifice. Honesty is a card which a diplomatist rarely expects an opponent to hold. Alban held such a card and determined to play it without loss of time.
"I have seen Lois Boriskoff," he said.
"Again—that is quick work."
The Count looked up, still smiling.
"I told you that we should have no difficulties," he exclaimed.
Alban helped himself to some superb bisque soup and permitted the waiter to fill his glass from a flask of Chablis.
"It was quite an accident upon my part. I went up to the Castle as you advised me and then down into the old town. Lois is with her friends there. I have had a long talk to her and now I understand everything."
The Count nodded his head and sipped his wine. The frankness of all this deceived him but not wholly. The boy had discovered something—it remained to be seen how much.
"You are successful beyond hope," he exclaimed presently, "this will be great news for Mr. Gessner. Of course, you asked her plainly what had happened?"
"She told me without my asking, Count. Now I understand everything—for the first time."
The tone of the reply arrested Sergius' attention and brought a frown to his face. He kept his eyes upon Alban when next he spoke.
"Those people are splendid liars," he remarked as though he had been expecting just such a story—"of course she spoke about me. I can almost imagine what she said."
"It was a very great surprise to me," Alban rejoined, and with so simple an air that any immediate reply seemed impossible. For five minutes they ate and drank in silence. Then Count Sergius, excusing himself, stood up and went to the window.
"Is she to come to this hotel?" he asked anon.
"She would be very foolish to do so, Count."
"Foolish, my dear fellow, whatever do you mean?"
"I mean what I say—that she would be mad to put herself into your power."
The Count bit his lip. It had been many years since so direct an insult had been offered to him, and yet he did not know how to answer it.
"I see that these people have been lying to you as I thought," he rejoined sharply, "is it not indiscreet to accept the word of such a person?"
"You know perfectly well that it is not, Count. You brought me to Warsaw to help you to arrest Lois Boriskoff. Well, I am not going to do so and that is all."
"Are you prepared to say the same to your friend in London—will you cable that news to Mr. Gessner?"
"I was going to do so without any loss of time. You can send the message for me if you like."
"Nothing will be easier. Let me take it down at your dictation. Really I am not offended. You have been deceived and are right to say what you think. Our friend at Hampstead shall judge between us."
He lighted a cigarette with apparent unconcern and sat down before the writing-table near the window.
"Now," he asked, "how shall we put it to him?"
Alban came over and stood by his side.
"Say that Paul Boriskoff must be released by his intervention without any condition whatever."
"He will never consent to that."
"He will have to consent, Count Sergius. His personal safety depends upon it."
"But, my dear boy, what of the girl? Are you going to leave her here to shout our friend's secret all over Warsaw?"
"She has not spoken and she will not speak, Count."
"Ah, you are among the credulous. Your confidence flatters her, I fear."
"It is just—she has never lied to me."
The Count shrugged his shoulders.
"I will send your message," he said.
He wrote the cable in a fine pointed hand and duly delivered it to the waiter. His own would follow it ten minutes later—when he had made up his mind how to act. A dangerous thought had come to him and begun to obsess his mind. This English boy, he was saying, might yet be a more dangerous enemy than the girl they had set out to trap. It might yet be necessary to clap them both in the same prison until the whole truth were known. He resolved to debate it at his leisure. There was plenty of time, for the police were watching all the exits from the city, and if Lois Boriskoff attempted to pass out, God help her.
"We must not expect an answer to this before dinner," he said, holding out the message for the waiter to take it. "If you think it all right, we can proceed to amuse ourselves until the reply comes. Warsaw is somewhat a remarkable city as you will already have seen. Some of its finest monuments have been erected to celebrate the execution of its best patriots. Every public square stands for an insurrection. The castle is fortified not against the stranger but the citizen—those guns you tell me about were put there by Nicolas to remind us that he would stand no nonsense. We are the sons of a nation which, officially, does not exist—but we honor our dead kings everywhere and can show you some of Thorwaldsen's finest monuments to them. Let us go out and see these wonders if you are willing."
The apparent digression served him admirably, for it permitted him to think. As many another in the service of the autocracy, he had a sterling love for Poland in its historical aspect, and was as proud as any man when he uttered the name of a Sobieski, a Sigismund or a Ladislaus. Revolution as a modern phase he despised. To him there were but people and nobles, and the former had become vulgar disturbers of the Czar's peace who must be chastened with rods. His own career depended altogether upon his callous indifference to mere human sympathies.
Alban could offer no objection to visit Warsaw under such a pleasant guide and he also welcomed the hours of truce. It came to him that the Count might honestly doubt Lois' word and that, knowing nothing of her, he would have had little reason to trust her. The morningpassed in a pleasant stroll down the Senatorska where are the chief shops of Moscow. Here the Count insisted upon buying his English friend a very beautiful amber and gold cigarette-case, to remind him, as he said, of their quarrel.
"It was very natural," he admitted, "I know these people so well. They talk like angels and act like devils. You will know more about them in good time. If I have interfered, it was at my friend Gessner's wish. I shall leave the matter in his hands now. If he accepts the girl's word, he is perfectly at liberty to do so. To me it is a matter of absolute indifference."
Alban took the cigarette-case but accepted it reluctantly. He could not resist the charm of this man's manner nor had he any abiding desire to do so. As far as that went, there was so much to see in these bright streets, so many odd equipages, fine horses, prettily dressed women, magnificent soldiers, that his interest was perpetually enchained and he uttered many exclamations of surprised delight very foreign to his usual manner.
"I cannot believe that this is the city we saw yesterday," he declared as the Count called a drosky and bade the driver make a tour of the avenues and the gardens—"you would think the people were the happiest in the world. I have never seen so many smiling faces before."
The Count understood the situation better.
"Life is sweet to them because of its uncertainty. They live while they can. When I used to fish in your English waters, they sent me to a river where theMayfly was out—ah, that beautiful, fluttering creature which may live one minute or may live five. He struggles up from the bottom of the river, you remember, and then, just as he has extended his splendid wings, up comes a great trout and swallows him—the poor thing of ten or twenty or a hundred seconds. Here we struggle up through the social ranks, and just when the waters of intrigue fascinate us and we go to play Narcissus to them, up comes the official trout and down his throat we go. Some day there will be so many of us that the trout will be gorged and unable to move. Then he will go to the cooking-pot—but not in our time, I think."
Alban remained silent. That "not in our time" seemed so strange a saying when he recalled the threats and the promises of the fanatics of Union Street. Was this fine fellow deceiving himself, or was he like the Russian bureaucracy, simply ignorant? The lad of twenty could not say, but he made a shrewder guess at the truth than the diplomatist by his side.
They visited the Lazienki Park, passing many of Warsaw's famous people as they went, and so affording the Count many opportunities for delightful little histories in which such men excel. No pretty woman escaped his observation, few the rigors of his tongue. He could tell you precisely when Madame Latienski began to receive young Prince Nicolas at her house and the exact terms in which old Latienski objected to the visits. Priests, jockeys, politicians, actors—for these he had a distinguishing gesture of contempt or pity or gracious admiration. The actresses invariablyrecognized him with alluring smiles, which he received condescendingly as who should say—well, you were fortunate. When they arrived at the Moktowski barracks, a group of officers quickly surrounded them and conducted them to a place where champagne corks might pop and cigarettes be lighted. This was but the beginning of a round of visits which Alban found tiresome to the last degree. How many glasses of wine he sipped, how many cigarettes he lighted, he could not have told you for a fortune. It was nearly five o'clock when they returned to the hotel and the Count proposed an hour's repose "de travail."
"There is no message from your friend," he said candidly, "no doubt your telegram has troubled him. Perhaps we shall get it by dinner-time. You must be very tired and perhaps you would like to lie down."
Alban did not demur and he went to his own room, and taking off his boots he lay upon his bed and quickly fell fast asleep. Count Sergius, however, had no intention of doing any such thing. He was closeted with the Chief of the Police ten minutes after they had returned, and in twenty he had come to a resolution.
"This young Englishman will meet the girl Lois Boriskoff to-morrow morning," he said. "Arrest the pair of them and let me know when it is done. But mind you—treat him as though he were your own son. I have my reasons."
The Chief merely bowed. He quite understood that such a man as Sergius Zamoyski would have very good reasons indeed.
Count Sergius believed that he had settled the affaire Gessner when he gave his instructions to the Chief of the Police, and the subsequent hours found him exceedingly pleased with himself. An artist in his profession, he flattered himself that it had all come about in the manner of his own anticipations and that he would be able to carry back to London a story which would not only win upon a rich man's gratitude, but advance him considerably in the favor of those who could well reward his labors.
This was an amiable reflection and one that ministered greatly to his self-content. No cloud stood upon the horizon of his self-esteem nor did shadows darken his glowing hopes. He had promised Richard Gessner to arrest the girl Lois Boriskoff, and arrested she would be before twelve o'clock to-morrow. As for this amiable English lad, so full of fine resolutions, so defiant, so self-willed, it would be a good jest enough to clap him in a police-station for four-and-twenty hours and to bow him out again, with profuse apologies, when the girl was on her way to Petersburg to join her amiable father in the Schlusselburg.
For Alban personally he had a warm regard. The very honesty of his character, his habit of saying justwhat he meant (so foreign to the Count's own practice), his ingenuous delight in all that he saw, his modern knight-errantry based upon an absurdly old-fashioned notion of right and wrong and justice and all such stuff as that, these were the very qualities to win the admiration of a man of the world who possessed none of them. Count Sergius said that the lad must suffer nothing. His intrigues with the daughter of a Polish anarchist were both dangerous and foolish. And was he not already the acknowledged lover of Anna Gessner, whom he must marry upon his return to London. Certainly, it would be very wrong not to lock him up, and he, Sergius, was not going to take the responsibility of any other course upon his already over-burdened shoulders.
These being his ideas, he found it amusing enough to meet Alban at the dinner-table and to speak of to-morrow and its programme. The reply to the cable they had dispatched to London lay already warm in his pocket, sent straight to him from the post-office as the police had directed. It was fitting that he should open the ball with a lie about this, and add thereto any other pleasant fancy which a fertile imagination dictated.
"Gessner does not cable us," he said at that moment of the repast when the glasses are first filled and the tongue is loosed. "I suppose he has gone over to Paris again as he hinted might be the case. If there is no news to-morrow, we must reconsider the arguments and see how we stand. You know that I am perfectly willing to be guided by him and will do nothing of my own initiative. If he can procure the old man's freedom,I will be the first to congratulate you. Meanwhile, I am not to forget that we have a box at the opera and thatHuguenotsis on the bill. When I am not in musical circles, I confess my enjoyment ofHuguenots. Meyerbeer always seemed to me a grand old charlatan who should have run a modern show in New York. He wrote one masterpiece and some five miles of rubbish—but why decry a great work because there are also those which are not great. Besides, I am not musician enough really to enjoy the Ring. If it were not for the pretty women who come to my box to escape ennui, I would find Wagner intolerable."
Alban, very quiet and not a little excited to-night, differed from this opinion altogether.
"My father was a musician," he said. "I believe that if he had not been a parson, he would have been a great musician. I don't know very much about music myself, but the first time that Mr. Gessner took me to hear one of Wagner's operas, I seemed to live in a new world. It could not have been just the desire to like it, for I had made up my mind that it would be very dry. There is something in such music as that which is better than all argument. I shall never forget the curious sensation which came to me when first I heard the overture to Tannhäuser played by a big orchestra. You will not deny that it is splendid?"
"Undoubtedly it's fine—especially where the clarinets came in and you seem to have five hundred mice running up your back. I am not going to be drawn into an argument on the point—these likes and dislikes are purely individual. To me it seems perfectlyridiculous that one man should quarrel with another because a third person has said or written something about which they disagree. In politics, of course, there is justification. The Have-Nots want to get money out of the Haves and the pockets supply the adjectives. But in the arts, which exist for our pleasure,—why, I might as well fall foul of you because you do not like caviar and are more partial to brunettes than to blondes. My taste is all the other way—I dote upon caviar; golden-haired women are to me just a little more attractive than the angels. But, of course, that does not speak for their tempers."
He laughed at the candor of it, and looking round the brilliant restaurant where they dined to-night, he began to speak in a low tone of Russian and Polish women generally.
"The Polish ladies are old-fashioned enough to love one man at a time—in their own country, at any rate. The Russians, on the contrary, are less selfish. A Russian woman is often the victim of three centuries, of suppressed female ambitions. She has large ideas, fierce passions, an excellent political sense—and all these must be cooled by the wet blanket of a very ordinary domesticity. In reality, she is not domesticated at all and would far sooner be following her lover—the one chosen for the day—down the street with a flag. Here you have the reason why a Russian woman appeals to us. She is rarely beautiful—some of them would themselves admit the deficiency—but she is never an embarrassment. Tell her that you are tired of her and you will discover that she was about tostagger your vanity by a similar confidence. In these days of revolution, she is seen at her best. Fear neither of God nor man will restrain her. We have more of the show of religion and less of the spirit in Russia than in any other country in the world. Here in Poland, it is a little different. Some of our women are as the idealists would have them to be. But there are others—or the city would be intolerable."
Alban had lived too long in a world of mean cynics that this talk should either surprise or entertain him. Men in Union Street spoke of women much as this careless fellow did, rarely generous to them and often exceedingly unjust. His own ideals he had confessed wholly to none, not even to Anna Gessner in the moment of their greatest intimacy. That fine old-world notion of the perfect womanhood, developed to the point of idolatry by the Celts of the West, but standing none the less as a witness to the whole world's desire, might remain but as a memory of his youth—he would neither surrender it nor admit that it was unworthy of men's homage. When Sergius spoke of his own countrywomen, Alban could forgive him all other estimates. And this was as much as to say that the image of Lois was with him even in that splendid place, and that some sentiment of her humble faith and sacrifice had touched him to the quick.
They went to the opera as the Count had promised and there heard an indifferent rendering of theHuguenots. A veritable sisterhood of blondes, willing to show off Count Sergius to some advantage, came from time to time to his box and was by him visited inturn. Officers in uniform crowded the foyers and talked in loud tones during the finest passages. A general sense of unrest made itself felt everywhere as though all understood the danger which threatened the city and the precarious existence its defenders must lead. When they quitted the theatre and turned into one of the military clubs for supper, the common excitement was even more marked and ubiquitous enough to arrest the attention even of such aflâneuras Sergius.
"These fellows are sitting down to supper with bombs under their chairs," he saidsotto voce. "That is to say, each thinks that a bomb is there and hopes that it will kill his neighbor. We have no sympathy in our public life here—the conditions are altogether against it. Imagine five hundred men upon the deck of a ship which has struck a rock, and consider what opportunities there would be to deplore the drowned. In Russia each plays for his own safety and does not care a rouble what becomes of the man next door. Such a fact is both our strength and our weakness—our strength because opportunities make men, and our weakness because we have no unity of plan which will enable us to fight such a combination as is now being pitted against us. I myself believe that the old order is at an end. That is why I have a villa in the south of France and some excellent apartments in Paris."
"You believe that the Revolutionaries will be victorious?" Alban asked in his quiet way.
"I believe that the power is passing from the hands of all autocratic governments, and that some phase of socialism will eventually be the policy of all civilized nations."
"Then what is the good of going to England, Count, if you believe that it will be the same story there?"
"It is only a step on the road. You will never have a revolution in your country, you have too much common sense. But you will tax your bourgeois until you make him bankrupt, and that will be your way of having all things in common. In America the workingman is too well off and the country is too young to permit this kind of thing yet. Its day will be much later—but it will come all the same, and then the deluge. Let us rejoice that we shall not see these things in our time. It is something to know that our champagne is assured to us."
He lifted a golden glass and drank a vague toast heartily. Others in the Club were frankly intoxicated and many a heated scene marked the progress of unceremonious and impromptu revels. Young officers, who carried their lives in their hands every hour, showed their contempt of life in many bottles. Old men, stern and gray at dawn, were so many babbling imbeciles at midnight. The waiters ran to and fro ceaselessly, their faces dripping with perspiration and their throats hoarse with shouting. The musicians fiddled as though the end of all things was at hand and must not surprise them at a broken bar. In Russia the scene was familiar enough, but to the stranger incomprehensible and revolting. Alban felt as one released from a pit of gluttony when at three in the morning Sergius staggered to his feet and bade a servant call him in a drosky.
"We have much to do to-morrow," he muttered, "much to do—and then, ah, my friend, if we only knew what we meant when we say 'and then.'"
A glimmer of wan daylight in the Count's bedroom troubled him while he undressed and he drew the curtains with angry fingers. Down there in the dismal streets the Cossacks watched the night-birds going home to bed and envied them alike their condition and its consequences. If Sergius rested a moment at the window, it was to mark the presence of these men and to take heart at it. And this is to say that few who knew him in the social world had any notion of the life he lived apart or guessed that authority stood to him for his shield and buckler against the unknown enemies his labors had created. Perhaps he rarely admitted the truth himself. Light and laughter and music were his friends in so far as they permitted him to forget the inevitable or to deride it.
Here in this room of eloquent shadows he was a different man indeed from the fine fellow of the opera and the barracks—a haunted secret man looking deep into the mysteries and weary for the sun. The brilliant scene he had but just quitted could now be regretted chiefly because he needed the mental anæsthetic with which society alone could supply him. Pale and gaunt and inept in his movements, few would have recognized the Sergius Zamoyski of the dressing-room or named himfor the diplomatist whose successes had earned the warmest encomiums of harassed authority. Herein lay a testimony to his success which his bitterest enemy would not have denied him. None knew better than he that the day of reckoning had come for all who opposed revolution in Russia, none had anticipated that day with a greater personal dread.
He closed the curtains, thankful that the Cossacks stood sentinels without, and hungering for sleep which had been denied to him so often lately. If he had any consolation of his thoughts, it lay in the comparative secrecy of his present mission and the fact that to-day would accomplish its purpose. The girl Lois had not confessed Richard Gessner's secret and she would stand presently where confession would not help her. As for this agreeable youth, who certainly had been her lover, he must be coerced into silence, threatened, cajoled, bought. Sergius remembered Alban's fine gospel of life and laughed when he recalled it. This devotion to humanity, this belief in great causes, what was it worth when a woman laughed and her rosy lips parted for a kiss? The world is too busy for the pedants who would stem the social revolution, was his argument—the rich men have too much to do to hide their common frailties that they should put on the habits of the friars. Let this hot gospeller acquire a fortune and he would become as the others before a month had passed. The women would see to that—for were not two of them already about the business?
He closed his curtains and undressed with a clumsy hand upon the buttons and many a curse at theobstinate things. The intense silence of the morning hour depressed him and he wondered that the hotel should sleep so soundly. His own door was both locked and bolted—he had a pistol in his travelling-bag and would finger it with grim satisfaction at such moments as these. Hitherto he had owed much to his very bravado, to a habit of going in and out among the people freely, and deriding all politics as a fool's employment. Latterly he had been wondering how far this habit would protect him, had made shrewd guesses at the truth and had come to the stage of question. Yesterday's work helped him to confirm these vague suspicions. How came it that Lois Boriskoff was able to warn this young Englishman, why had she come immediately to his hotel and followed him to the old quarters of the city? This could only mean that her friends had telegraphed the information from London, that every step of the journey had been reported and that a promising plan of action had been decided upon. Sergius dreaded this more than anything that could have happened to him. They will ask what share I had in it, he told himself; and he knew what the answer to that must be. Let them but suspect a hundredth part of the truth and he might not have twenty hours to live.
It had been a splendid life so far and a sufficient atonement for the dreaded hours apart. There in his own room he gave battle to the phantoms by recalling the faces of the pretty women he had cajoled and defeated, the houses of pride he had destroyed, the triumphs he had numbered and the recompense he had enjoyed. To be known to none save as a careless idler, to pass as afigure of vengeance unrecognized across the continents, to be the idol of the police in three cities, to have men running to and fro at his command though they knew not by whose order they were sent, here was wine of life so intoxicating that a man might sell his very soul to possess it. Sergius did not believe that there was any need for such a bargain as this—he had been consistently successful hitherto in eluding even the paltriest consequences of his employment—but the dark hours came none the less, and coming, they whispered a word which even the bravest may shudder to hear.
He slept but fitfully, listening for any sounds from the city without and anxious for the hotel to awaken to its daily routine. The cooler argument of the passing hour declared it most unlikely that any plan would be ventured until Lois Boriskoff's fate were known and Alban had visited her this morning. If there were danger to be apprehended, the moment of it would arrive when the girl was arrested and the story of Alban Kennedy's misadventure made known to her friends. Sergius began to perceive that he must not linger an hour in Warsaw when this were done. He could direct operations as easily from Paris or London as from this conspicuous hotel, and with infinitely less risk to himself and his empire. Sometimes he wondered that he had been so foolish as to enter Russia at all. Why could he not have telegraphed to the Chief of the Police to arrest the girl as soon as might be and to flog her into a confession. The whip would have purchased her secret readily enough, then the others could have been arrested also and Gessner left reassured beyond question. Sergiusblamed himself very much that he had permitted a finer chivalry to guide his acts. "I came because this young man persuaded me to come," he admitted, and added the thought that he had been a fool for his pains.
This would have been about four o'clock of the morning. He slept a little while upon it, but woke again at five and sat up in bed to mark a step on the landing without and to ask himself who had the right to be there at such an hour. When he had waited a little while, he came to the conclusion that two people were approaching his door and making little secret of their coming. Presently a knock informed him that he had nothing whatever to fear; and upon asking the question "What do you want?" a voice answered immediately, "From the bureau, your excellency, with a letter." This he concluded to mean that the Chief of the Police had some important news to convey to him and had sent his own messenger to the hotel.
"Wait a moment and I will let you in," he replied, and asked, "I suppose you can wait a little while?"
"It is very urgent, excellency—you had better open at once."
The Count sprang up from his bed and drew the curtains back from the window. A warm glow of sunlight instantly suffused the cold room and warmed it with welcome beams. Down there in the streets the Cossacks still nodded upon patient horses as though no event of the night had disturbed them. A drosky passed, driving an old man to the railway station—there were porters at the doors of some of the houses and a few wagons going down toward the river. Allthis Sergius perceived instantly in one swift vision. Then he opened the door and admitted the officer.
"There were two of you," he exclaimed, peering down the passage.
"It is true, excellency, myself and the night-porter, but he has gone to sleep again."
"And you?"
"From the Chief, excellency, with this letter."
He held out a great square document, grotesquely sealed and carefully folded. A small man with a pockmarked face, he wore the uniform of an ordinary gendarme and aped that rôle to perfection. Saluting gravely, he permitted the letter to pass from his hands. Then he closed the door and leaned his back against it.
"I am to take an answer to the bureau, excellency."
The Count read a few lines of the document and looked up uneasily.
"You say that you were commanded to wake me up—for this?"
"Those are my orders."
"Zaniloff must have lost his wits—there was nothing else?"
The man took one stride forward.
"Yes," he cried in a low voice, "there was this, excellency."
* * * * *
Alban slept no better than his friend; in truth he hardly closed his eyes until they waked him and told him of the tragedy. He had said little to Sergius during the evening, but the perplexities of the long day remained with him and were not to be readily silenced.
That his patron sent no reply to their urgent telegram he thought a little strange. Mr. Gessner's silence could only mean that he had left London suddenly, perhaps had set out to join them in Warsaw. Meanwhile Alban perceived very clearly in what a position of danger Lois stood and how difficult it would be to help her if others did not come to his assistance.
Accustomed to regard all the Revolutionaries from the standpoint of the wild creatures who talked nonsense in the East End of London, he could not believe in old Herr Petermann's optimism or pay much attention to the wild plan of escape he had devised. It must be absurd to think that Lois could leave Poland disguised as a servant. Alban himself would readily have recognized her in her disguise if he had been seeking her at the time, and the police would very soon detect it when their minds were set upon the purpose. In his own opinion, and this was shrewd enough, their hope of salvation lay in Richard Gessner's frank acceptance of the position. The banker had influence enough with the Russian authorities to release both Lois and her father. He must do so or accept the consequences of his obstinacy.
All this and much more was in Alban's head while he tossed restlessly upon his strange bed and waited impatiently for the day. The oddest fancies came to him, the most fantastic ideas. Now he would be living in London again, a drudge at the works, the nightly companion of little Lois, the adventurer of the streets and the slums. Then, as readily, he would recall the most trifling incidents of his life in Richard Gessner's house,the days of the miracles, the wonderful hours when he had worshipped Anna Gessner and believed almost in her divinity. This had been a false faith, surely. He knew now that he would never marry Anna, and that must mean return to the wilderness, the bitter days of poverty and all the old-time strife with circumstance. It would have been easier, he thought, if those weeks of wonderland had never been. Richard Gessner had done him no service—rich men rarely help those whom they patronize for their own ends.
Alban thought of all this, and still being unable to sleep, he fell to numbering the hours which stood between him and his meeting with Lois. He was sure that she would be ready for him however early his visit might be—and he said that he would ring for his coffee at seven o'clock and try to go down to the river at eight. If there were no message from Mr. Gessner before he left, he thought it would be wise to counsel patience for this day at least. In plain truth he was less concerned about the diplomatic side of the affair than the personal. An overmastering desire for Lois' companionship, the wish to hear her voice, to speak to her, to talk as they had talked in the dark days of long ago, prevailed above the calm reckoning of yesterday. His resolution to defeat Count Sergius at his own game seemed less heroic than it had done twelve hours ago. Alban had conceit enough not to fear the Count. That incurable faith in British citizenship still upheld him.
Seven had been the hour named by his intention—it was a little after six o'clock when he heard a knockupon his bedroom door and started up wondering who called him at such an hour.
"Who is there, what do you want?" he cried, with the bedclothes still about his shoulders. No one answered this, but the knock was repeated, a decisive knock as of one who meant to win admittance.
"All right, I will come in a minute," was now his answer; to which he added the question—"Is that you, Count? Do you know it's only just six o'clock?"
He opened the door and found himself face to face with the hotel valet, an amiable young Frenchman by the name of Malette.
"Monsieur," said the man, "will you please come at once? There has been an accident—his excellency is very ill."
"An accident to the Count? Is it serious, Malette?"
"It is very serious, monsieur. They say that he will not live. The doctors are with him—I thought that you would wish to know immediately."
Alban turned without a word and began to put on his clothes. His hands were quite cold and he trembled as though stricken by an ague. When he had found a dressing-gown, he huddled it on anyhow and followed Malette down the corridor.
"When did this happen, Malette?"
"I do not know, monsieur. One of the servants chanced to pass his excellency's door and saw something which frightened him. He called the concierge and they waked the Herr Director. Afterwards they sent for the police."
"Do they think that the Count was assassinated, then?"
"Ah, that is to find out. The officers will help us to say. Will you go in at once, monsieur, or shall I tell the Herr Director?"
Alban said that he would go at once. The young fear to look upon the face of death and he was no braver than others of his age. A terrible sense of dread overtook him while he stood before the door and heard the hushed whispers of those about it. Here a giant police officer had already taken up his post as sentinel and he cast a searching glance upon all who approached. There were two or three privileged servants standing apart and discussing the affair; but a stain upon a crimson carpet was more eloquent of the truth than any word. Alban came near to swooning as he stepped over it and entered the room without word or knock.
They had laid the Count upon the bed and dragged it to the window to husband the light. Two doctors, hastily summoned from a neighboring hospital, worked like heroes in their shirt sleeves—a nurse in a gray dress stood behind them holding sponge and bandages. At the first glance, the untrained onlooker would have said that Sergius Zamoyski was certainly dead. The intense pallor of his face, the set eyes, the stiffened limbs, spoke of the rigor mortis and the finality of tragedy. None the less, the surgeons went to work as though all might yet be saved. Uttering their orders in the calm and measured tones of those whom no scene of death could unnerve, they were unconscious of all else but the task before them and its immediate achievement. When they had need of anything, they spoke to the Herr Director of the hotel who passed on hiscommands in a sharp decisive tone to a porter who stood at his heels. Near by him stood the Chief of the Police, Zaniloff, a short burly man who wore a dark green uniform and held his sheathed sword lightly in his left hand. These latter looked up when the door opened, but the doctors took no notice whatever. There was an overpowering odor of anaesthetics in the room although the windows had been thrown wide open.
"Is the Count dead?" Alban asked them in a low voice. He had taken a few steps toward the bed and there halted irresolute. "What is it, what has happened, sir?" he continued, turning to Zaniloff. That worthy merely shrugged his shoulders.
"The Count has been assassinated—we believe by a woman. The doctors will tell us by and by."
Alban shuddered at the words and took another step toward the bed. He felt giddy and faint. The words he had just heard were ringing in his ears as a sound of rushing waters. "Has Lois done this thing?"—incredible! And yet the man implied as much.
"I cannot stay here," he exclaimed presently, "I must go to my room, if you please."
He turned and reeled from the place, ashamed of his weakness, yet unable to control it. Outside upon the landing, he discovered that Zaniloff was at his elbow and had something to say to him. Speaking sharply and autocratically in the Russian tongue, that worthy realized almost immediately that he had failed to make himself understood and so called the Herr Director to his aid.
"They will require your attendance at the bureau,"the Director said with an obsequious bow toward Alban—"you must dress at once, sir, and accompany this gentleman."
Alban said that he would do so. He was miserably cold and ill and trembling still. Knowing nothing of the truth, he believed that they were taking him to Lois Boriskoff and that she was already in custody.
Alban had been fifteen days out of England when Anna Gessner met Willy Forrest one afternoon as she was driving a pair of chestnut ponies down Piccadilly towards the Circus. He, amiable creature, had just left a club and a bridge table which had been worth fifteen pounds to him. The gray frock suit he wore suited him admirably. He certainly looked very smart and wide-awake.
"Anna, by Jupiter," he cried, as he stepped from the pavement at the very corner of Dover Street—"well, if my luck don't beat cock-fighting. Where are you off to, Anna—what have you done with the shoving-machine? I thought you never aired the gee-gees now. Something new for you, isn't it? May I get in and have a pawt? We shall be fined forty bob and costs at Marlborough Street if we hold up the traffic. Say, you look ripping in this char à bancs, upon my soul you're killing."
She had not meant to stop for him, and half against her wish she now reined the ponies in and made room for him. There never had been a day in her life since she had known him when she was able to resist altogether the blandishments of this pleasant rogue, who made so many appeals to her interest. To-day sheer curiosity conquered her. She wished above all things to hearwhat he had done with the extravagant cheque her father had sent him.
"I drove the ponies for a change," she said coldly, "we must not be unkind to dumb creatures. Do you know, it is most improper that you should be seen with me in this carriage, Willy. Just think what my father would say if he heard of it."
Willy Forest, to give him his due, rarely devoted much time to unpleasant thoughts.
"What's the good of dragging your father in, Anna?" he asked her sagely. "I want to have a talk to you and you want to have a talk to me. Where shall we go, now? We can't blow the loud trumpet at a tea-shop and a hotel is inquisitive. Why not come round to my rooms? There's an old charwoman there who will do very well when rumors arise—and she'll make us a cup of tea. Why not come, Anna?"
"It's out of the question, Willy. You know that it is. Besides, I am never going to speak to you again."
"Oh, that's all right—that's what you used to say when you came over to the cottage. We're getting too old for that kind of nonsense, you and I, Anna. Suppose I tell your man to wait for us in Berkeley Square. I'll say that we are going into the Arcade to look at the motor-cars—and they won't let you keep a carriage waiting in Bond Street now. I can tell you what I've heard about your friend Alban Kennedy while you're cutting me the bread and butter."
Her attention was arrested in an instant.
"What can you know about Mr. Kennedy?" she asked quickly, while her face betrayed her interest.
"Oh, I know a lot more than most. I've struck more than one friend of his these later days, and a fine time he seems having with the girls out yonder. Come over to my rooms and I'll tell you about it. I'm just fitting up a bit of a place in the Albany since your good father began to encourage virtue. I say, Anna,—he should never have sent me that cheque, you know he shouldn't."
It was a masterpiece of impudence, but it won upon her favor none the less. She had made up her mind a week ago that Willy Forrest was a rogue, a thief, and a charlatan. Yet here she was—for such is woman—tolerating his conversation and not unwilling to hear his explanations. Upon it all came his insinuation that he had news of Alban. Certainly, she did not know how to refuse him.
"You are sure that there is some one in your rooms—I will leave them instantly if there is not," she exclaimed, surprised at scruples which never had troubled her hitherto. Forrest protested by all the gods that the very doubt was an outrage.
"There's a hag about fit to knock down a policeman," he rejoined, with a feigned indignation fine to see. "Now be sensible, Anna, and let's get out. Are we babes and sucklings or what? Don't make a scene about it. I don't want you to come if you'd rather not."
She turned the ponies round almost at the door of the Albany, which they had just passed while they talked, and drove up to the door of that somewhat dismal abode. A word to her groom to be in Berkeley Square in half-an-hour did not astonish that worthy, who wasquite accustomed to "Miss Hanna's" vagaries. In the corridor before the chambers, Willy laid stress upon the point about the charwoman and made much of her.
"I'll ring the old girl up and you can cross-question her if you like. She's a regular beauty. Don't you think that I'd deceive you, Anna. Have I ever done it in all my miserable life—eh, what?" he said at the door. "Now walk right in and I'll order tea. It seems like old times to have you about, upon my word it does."
She followed him into the chambers, her anxiety about the charwoman absolutely at rest. The rooms themselves were in some little confusion, but promised to be splendidly furnished presently. Fine suites of furniture were all huddled together like policemen at a scene of public rejoicing. The rich curtains, unhung, were neatly folded upon chairs and sofas—a few sporting prints relieved the cold monotony of tinted walls—the library boasted Ruff and Wisdom for its chief masterpieces. Nothing, however, disconcerted Willy Forrest. He had produced that charwoman before you could count five.
"Make us a cup of tea, Mrs. Smiggs, will you?" he asked her boisterously. "Here's my cousin come to tell me how to plant the furniture. We shan't trouble you long—just make love to the kettle and say we're in a hurry, will you now, there's a good soul."
Mrs. Smiggs took a sidelong glance at the lady, and tossing a proud but tousled head assented to the proposition in far from becoming terms.
"I'm sure, sir, that I'm always willing to oblige," she said condescendingly, "if as the young lady wouldn't like me to step out and get no cakes nor nothing—"
"No, no, no cakes, thank you, Mrs. Smiggs—just a cup of tea as you can make it and that's all. My cousin's carriage is waiting—she won't be here ten minutes—eh, what?"
The good woman left them, carrying a retroussé nose at an angle of suspicion. Willy Forrest drew an arm-chair towards the window of that which would presently be his dining-room, and having persuaded Anna to take it, he poised himself elegantly upon the arm of a sofa near by and at once invited her confidence.
"Say, Anna, now, what's the good of nonsense? Why did you let the old man send me that cheque?"
She began to pull off her gloves, slowly and with contemplative deliberation.
"I let him send it because I did not wish to marry you."
"That's just what I thought. You got in a huff about a lot of fool's talk on the course and turned it round upon me. Just like a woman—eh, what? As if I could prevent your horse going dotty. That was Farrier's business, not mine."
"But you let me back the horse."
"Of course I did. He might have won. I was just backing my luck against yours. Of course I didn't mean you to lose anything. We were just two good pals together, and what I took out of the ring would have been yours if you'd asked me. Good Lord, what a mess your father's made of it! Me with his five thouin my pocket and you calling me a blackguard. You did call me a blackguard—now didn't you, Anna?"
It was very droll to see him sitting there and for a wonder telling her something very like the truth. This, however, had been the keystone of a moderately successful life. He had always told people that he was a scamp—a kind of admission the world is very fond of. In Anna's case he found the practice quite useful. It rarely failed to win her over.
"What was I to think?" she exclaimed almost as though her perplexity distressed her. "The people say that I have cheated them and you win my money. If I don't pay you, you say that I must marry you. Will you deny that it is the truth? You won this money from me to compel me to marry you?"
Captain Willy Forrest slapped his thigh as though she had told him an excellent joke.
"That's the best thing I've heard for a twelvemonth," cried he; "as if you were the sort to be caught that way, Anna—by an impostor too, as your Little Boy Blue told you at Henley. He said I was an impostor, didn't he? Well, he's about right there—I'm not the son of old Sir James Forrest—never was, my dear. He was my father's employer, and a devilish good servant he had. But I've some claims on his memory all the same—and why shouldn't I call myself Forrest if I want to? Now, Anna, I'll be as plain with you as a parson at a pigeon match. I do want to marry you—I've wanted to marry you ever since I knew you—but if you think I'm such a fool as to go about it in the way you say I've done, well, then, I'll put right in for theBalmy Stakes and win 'em sure and certain. Don't you see that the boot's just on the other leg right along? I win your money because I want you to think I'm a decent sort of chap when I don't take it. As for the bookies who hissed the horse on the course—who's to pity them? Didn't they see the old gee in the paddock—eh, what! Hadn't they as good a chance as any of us to spot that dotty leg. If I'd a been born with a little white choker round my swan's-down, I'd have shouted the news from the mulberry tree. But I wasn't, my dear—I'm just one of the ruck on the lookout to make a bit—and who'll grease my wheels if I leave my can at home? No, don't you think it—I wanted to marry you right enough, but that wasn't the road. What your father's paid me, he's going to have back again and pretty soon about. Let him give it to the kid who's playing Peep-bo with the Polish Venus—I shan't take it, no, not if I come down to a porcelain bath in the Poplar Union—and what's more, you know I won't, Anna."
His keen eyes searched her face earnestly, much more earnestly than their wont, as he asked her this pointed question. Anna, upon her part, knew that he had juggled cleverly with the admitted facts of the case and yet her interest in his confession waxed stronger every moment. What an odd fascination this man exercised upon her. She felt drawn toward him as to some destiny she could not possibly escape. And when he spoke of Alban, then he had her finally enmeshed.
"What do you know of Mr. Kennedy?" she asked, sitting up very straight and turning flashing eyes uponhim. "He certainly wouldn't write to you. How do you know what he is doing?"
"A little fat bird in a black coat living down Whitechapel way. Oh, I don't make any secret of it. I know a man who used to be a parson. He began to stick needles into himself, and the Bishop said—what ho! They took off his pinafore and he is now teaching Latin outside Aldgate Station. He's in with the Polish crowd—I beg your pardon, the gentlemen refugees from Poland—who are sewing the buttons on our shirts not far from the Commercial Road. Those people knew more about your friend than he knows about himself. Ask 'em straight and they'll tell you that he is in Warsaw and the girl Lois Boriskoff with him. Whether they've begun to keep house, I don't pretend to say. But it's as true as the east wind and that's gospel. You ask your father to make his own inquiries. I don't want to take it on myself. If he can tell you that Master Alban Kennedy is not something like the husband of the Polish lady Lois Boriskoff, then I'll give a penny to a hospital. Now go and ask him, Anna—don't you wait a minute, you go and ask him."
"Not until I've had that cup of tea, Willy."
She turned round as the charwoman entered and so hid her face from him. Light laughter cloaked at once the deep affront her pride had received, and the personal sense of shame his words had left. Not for a moment did she question the truth of his story or seek to prove it. As women all the world over, she accepted instantly the hint at a man's faithlessness and determined that it must be true. And this was to say that her passionfor Alban Kennedy had never been anything but a phase of girlish romance acceptable for the moment and to be made permanent only by persistence. The Eastern blood, flowing warm in her veins, would never have left her long satisfied with the precise and strenuous Englishman and the restraint his nationality put upon him. She hungered for the warm passionate caress which the East had taught her to desire. She was drawn insensibly toward the man who had awakened this instinct within her and ministered to it whenever he approached her.
They drank their tea in silence, each perhaps afraid to admit the hazard of their task. When the moment came, she had recovered her self-control sufficiently to refer again to the question of the cheque and to do so adroitly.
"Are you going to return that money to my father, Willy?"
"That's just as you like. When you come here for good, we could send it back together."
"What makes you think that I will come here for good, Willy?"
"Because when I kiss you—like this—you tremble, Anna."
He caught her instantly in his arms and covered her face with passionate kisses. Struggling for a moment in his embrace, she lay there presently acquiescent as he had known even before his hands touched her. An hour had passed before Anna quitted the flat—and then she knew beyond any possibility of question that she was about to become Willy Forrest's wife.