Chapter Thirty Four.

Chapter Thirty Four.Outcast.She moved slightly, raised her cup to her lips with a coquettish air, and on setting it down her dark bright eyes again met mine with inquiring glance.“Well,” she exclaimed. “Is it not strange that you, of all men, should be in Skerstymone?”“I came to seek you,” I said, looking earnestly into her pretty face.“For what reason?”“Because by your aid alone can I regain my lost happiness,” I answered in deep earnestness. “Once, before you left London, you made certain allegations against Ella; but you failed to substantiate them, or to fulfil your promise in exchange for your passport.”“Yes, I remember.”“She is now my wife, and I have come to hear the truth from your own lips, Sonia.”“Your wife!” she gasped, glaring at me. “Has—has she actually dared to marry you?”“Yes,” I answered. “She has dared, because she loves me.”She remained silent, with knit brows, for a long time engrossed in thought.Then briefly I told her how, after her departure, we had married, and related how suspicion had been aroused within me by her clandestine meetings with Cecil Bingham, her flight, and my subsequent discovery of her true position.“Then you are aware who she really is,” she observed slowly at last. “That she has dared to enter into a matrimonial alliance with you is certainly astounding. Indeed, it is incredible.”“Why?” I inquired in surprise.“There are the strongest reasons why she should never have become your wife,” she replied ambiguously.“She lives apart from me. She has returned to her house in Paris,” I said.“Ah! it is best,” she answered mechanically. “It is best for both of you.”“But we love one another, and although she fears to tell me the truth regarding all this mystery that has enveloped her for so long, you, nevertheless, are in a position to explain everything. Therefore I have come to you. You were my wife’s friend, Sonia,” I went on. “Tell me why she has acted with all this secrecy.”“Her friend,” she echoed blankly. “Yes, you are right,” she sighed. “It was a strange friendship, ours; she, a Grand Duchess against whom never a word of scandal had been uttered, and I—well I was notorious. The people in Vienna and Paris pointed at me in the streets, and fashionable women copied my manners and my dress. Yet there was, nay there still is, a strong tie between us, a tie that can never be severed.”“Tell me of it,” I urged, when, pausing, she turned her pale agitated face away from me towards the small grimy window that overlooked the great sunlit steppe.“Once I believed that she was your enemy, and told you so. I feared that because of her position she would never marry you. Yet it seems she was really in earnest, therefore I now withdraw that allegation. She evidently loves you.”“Yes, but we are living apart because she fears the revelation of some terrible secret if she acknowledges me as her husband.”“And that is why you have come here—to learn of her past!” she cried in a hoarse hollow voice, as if the truth had suddenly dawned upon her.I nodded gravely in the affirmative, then told her of our meeting in Paris, and her refusal to make any satisfactory explanation.“I envied Elizaveta once,” she said reflectively at last. “I envied her because she was so supremely happy in your love. Yet it now seems as if I, degraded outcast that I am, have even more happiness and freedom.”“You were once her friend—she visited you every day. You can be her friend now; and by telling me the truth, bring joy and confidence to both of us. You can make our lives happy, if you only will.”“No,” she answered coldly, her face hard and set. There was a cruel look in her eyes. “Why should I? Why should I strive for the happiness of one to whom I owe all my grief and despair?”“Surely no misfortune of yours is due to her?” I protested quickly.“Misfortune!” she wailed, her eyes flashing. “Would you not call the loss of the man you love, misfortune?” Then, in quieter tones, she added with a sigh, “Ah, you don’t know, Geoffrey, how intensely bitter my strange, adventurous life has been. You believe, no doubt, that a woman of my character cannot love. Well, I thought so once. But I tell you that in London I loved one man; the only man I ever met that I could marry. I had renounced my past, and sought to lead a new life when I knew that he cared for me, and was preparing to make me his wife. But she, the Grand Duchess who tricked you so cleverly, came between us, and we were parted. Then I came here, to Russia, sought solace among my former companions, the scum of the gaols and ghettos, and have now descended in despair to what I am. By her, the woman you ask me to free from a terrible thraldom, I have been thrust back into hopelessness, and have lost for ever the one chance I had of joy and love.”Then, covering her handsome face with her hands, she burst into a torrent of tears.“Come,” I said, rising, and stroking her soft, silky hair. Her arms were upon the table, and she had buried her head in them, sobbing as if her heart would break. “Come, do not give way,” I urged. “Who was the man you loved?”“That concerns no one but myself,” she murmured. “Even she has never had proof that we loved one another. Yet to her is due all this grief, that has fallen upon me.”Raising her head, she strove to suppress her emotion, and her brilliant tear-bedewed eyes fixed themselves steadily upon mine.“I may perhaps be able to assist you,” I said. “I did on a former occasion.”“No,” she answered, in a voice of intense sorrow. “I have now grown careless of myself, careless of life, careless of everything since I left London. With the man I loved so truly I could have been happy always, yet she knew my past, and would allow me no chance to redeem myself. It is but what I deserve, I suppose, therefore I must suffer. But can you wonder that, hating the world as I do, I entertain a certain grim satisfaction in being leader of this ragged, ruffianly band of frontier free-lances?”“No,” I answered, echoing her sigh; “I am scarcely surprised, yet I cannot think that my wife, who was your friend, would willingly serve you as you believe.”“She did,” Sonia answered, again raising her sad, dark eyes. “She alone I have to thank for the sorrow that has wrecked my life.”“What was the name of the man you loved?” I asked. “Do I know him?”“Yes, you know him; but his name is of no consequence,” she answered evasively, in a faint voice, lowering her eyes. “My secret is best kept in my own heart.”“If my wife did it unintentionally, without knowing you were lovers, there is some excuse,” I said, half apologetically.“No,” she answered, with sudden harshness. “No excuse is possible. There were other circumstances which rendered her conduct unpardonable.”“I really can’t believe it,” I said. “I feel certain that she would never have exposed you willingly.”“Alas!” she said at last, “the evil is now done, and the stigma cannot be removed. But you asked me to reveal certain facts that would place her mind at rest, restore her confidence, and give her freedom. I have told you. I have made a confession to you that no other person has had from my lips.”“Ah, do not be pitiless,” I cried imploringly, feeling assured that she alone knew the truth. Her assertion that she could restore my wife to freedom meant, I knew, the removal of that dark cloud of suspicion and dread that, overshadowing her, held her spellbound by fear. “Think,” I urged, standing close to her, my hand resting upon the bare, unpolished table. “Once when you came to me, a stranger, and I rendered you a service, you promised to perform one for me in return when I desired it. I am now sorely in need of your friendship, and have come to you for aid.”“We shall be friends always, I hope, Geoffrey,” she answered quietly, pushing back her dark hair from her brow. Her head was untidy and her hair tangled, for so callous had she grown that she took no heed either of attire or personal appearance.“Then you will, at least, fulfil your promise,” I said.“No,” she replied, with dogged firmness. “In this matter I absolutely refuse. I know how weary and wretched your life must be, with mystery surrounding you as it does, and being compelled to live apart from the woman you love; but, frankly, the fact that her cold, proud Highness fears to acknowledge you, or tell you the truth, is a source of satisfaction to me. She has sown dissension, and is now reaping her harvest of tears.”The cankerworm of care was eating out my heart, and I resolved to make one final appeal to her better nature, albeit I saw from her demeanour how embittered she was against Ella.“No effort have I left unattempted to seek some solution of the problem,” I said. “Yet all is unavailing. I have sought the truth from Cecil Bingham, but he refused to utter one word, and referred me to you. He said you knew all.”“Cecil Bingham!” she cried, suddenly starting. “Do you know him? He was your wife’s friend.”“Yes,” I answered. “I know that, although I am unaware of the true character of their relationship.”“Ah!” she ejaculated, and I thought she winced beneath my words. “He sent you here?”“Yes,” I said. “But before seeing him I had endeavoured to obtain some facts from another of Ella’s acquaintances, Andrew Beck.”“Andrew Beck?” she repeated in a low, hollow voice, her brows contracting as if mention of his name were unpleasant to her ears. “You were jealous of him once,” she added in a hard, dry tone.“Yea,” I smiled. “But I am so no longer.”“Why? I thought from what Ella told me long ago that you had some cause. He certainly was one of her admirers.”“Yes. But he’s about to be married.”“Married!” she cried wildly, starting to her feet, her lips moving convulsively. “Andrew Beck?”I nodded, for a moment surprised; but, suddenly remembering, I took from my pocket-book the newspaper cutting announcing the engagement.Eagerly her strained eyes read the three formal lines of print, then hastily crushing the piece of paper in her hand she cast it from her with a gesture of anger. Her face was pale and determined, her thin hands, no longer loaded with rings as they once had been, twitched nervously, and I could plainly see the strange convulsion that the unexpected intelligence had caused within her.“Do you know the—the girl who is to be his wife?” she stammered presently.“No, we have never met,” I answered. “His marriage does not, however, concern us for the moment. It is of Ella and her strange secret that I seek knowledge. Tell me the truth, Sonia, so that I may be able to place within her hand a weapon wherewith to combat this mysterious enemy she fears.”There was a long pause. Her breath came and went quickly in hot convulsive gasps. Her hands were so tightly clenched that their nails were driven into the palms; her mouth was firmly set, and in her eyes was a cold, stony stare. The knowledge of Beck’s intended marriage had aroused within her a veritable tumult of passion.“The truth!” she cried hoarsely at last, her hand upon her throbbing breast. “You ask me to clear suspicion from the woman whose whim it has been to marry you and I refuse, because I should bring her happiness, and remove from her the terror that now holds her enthralled. But I have reconsidered my decision. I—”“Ah, tell me!” I exclaimed, interrupting her in my eagerness.“I will speak because my disclosures, remarkable though they may be, will not only bring peace to you and your wife, but will also prove a trifle disconcerting to her companions. Once they hunted me from town to town as a criminal; they will now beg to me for mercy upon their knees.”“Tell me. Do not conceal the truth longer,” I cried anxiously.“No. Only in Elizaveta’s presence will I speak,” she answered, in a strained voice quivering with violent emotion. “Let us start for Paris to-night. When the moon rises I will guide you through the forest into Germany; we can cross the Jura by the bridge beyond Absteinen, and from Tilsit take train to Berlin. In two days we can be in Paris. Take me to her,” she said with sudden eagerness, “and you shall both learn facts that will astound you.”“I am quite ready,” I said; “I knew you alone would prove my friend.”“No,” she answered, regarding me gravely. “No, Geoffrey. It is a secret full of grim realities and ugly revelations, which, when disclosed, will, I fear, cause you to hate me, and count me among your enemies. But you seek the truth; you shall therefore be satisfied.”

She moved slightly, raised her cup to her lips with a coquettish air, and on setting it down her dark bright eyes again met mine with inquiring glance.

“Well,” she exclaimed. “Is it not strange that you, of all men, should be in Skerstymone?”

“I came to seek you,” I said, looking earnestly into her pretty face.

“For what reason?”

“Because by your aid alone can I regain my lost happiness,” I answered in deep earnestness. “Once, before you left London, you made certain allegations against Ella; but you failed to substantiate them, or to fulfil your promise in exchange for your passport.”

“Yes, I remember.”

“She is now my wife, and I have come to hear the truth from your own lips, Sonia.”

“Your wife!” she gasped, glaring at me. “Has—has she actually dared to marry you?”

“Yes,” I answered. “She has dared, because she loves me.”

She remained silent, with knit brows, for a long time engrossed in thought.

Then briefly I told her how, after her departure, we had married, and related how suspicion had been aroused within me by her clandestine meetings with Cecil Bingham, her flight, and my subsequent discovery of her true position.

“Then you are aware who she really is,” she observed slowly at last. “That she has dared to enter into a matrimonial alliance with you is certainly astounding. Indeed, it is incredible.”

“Why?” I inquired in surprise.

“There are the strongest reasons why she should never have become your wife,” she replied ambiguously.

“She lives apart from me. She has returned to her house in Paris,” I said.

“Ah! it is best,” she answered mechanically. “It is best for both of you.”

“But we love one another, and although she fears to tell me the truth regarding all this mystery that has enveloped her for so long, you, nevertheless, are in a position to explain everything. Therefore I have come to you. You were my wife’s friend, Sonia,” I went on. “Tell me why she has acted with all this secrecy.”

“Her friend,” she echoed blankly. “Yes, you are right,” she sighed. “It was a strange friendship, ours; she, a Grand Duchess against whom never a word of scandal had been uttered, and I—well I was notorious. The people in Vienna and Paris pointed at me in the streets, and fashionable women copied my manners and my dress. Yet there was, nay there still is, a strong tie between us, a tie that can never be severed.”

“Tell me of it,” I urged, when, pausing, she turned her pale agitated face away from me towards the small grimy window that overlooked the great sunlit steppe.

“Once I believed that she was your enemy, and told you so. I feared that because of her position she would never marry you. Yet it seems she was really in earnest, therefore I now withdraw that allegation. She evidently loves you.”

“Yes, but we are living apart because she fears the revelation of some terrible secret if she acknowledges me as her husband.”

“And that is why you have come here—to learn of her past!” she cried in a hoarse hollow voice, as if the truth had suddenly dawned upon her.

I nodded gravely in the affirmative, then told her of our meeting in Paris, and her refusal to make any satisfactory explanation.

“I envied Elizaveta once,” she said reflectively at last. “I envied her because she was so supremely happy in your love. Yet it now seems as if I, degraded outcast that I am, have even more happiness and freedom.”

“You were once her friend—she visited you every day. You can be her friend now; and by telling me the truth, bring joy and confidence to both of us. You can make our lives happy, if you only will.”

“No,” she answered coldly, her face hard and set. There was a cruel look in her eyes. “Why should I? Why should I strive for the happiness of one to whom I owe all my grief and despair?”

“Surely no misfortune of yours is due to her?” I protested quickly.

“Misfortune!” she wailed, her eyes flashing. “Would you not call the loss of the man you love, misfortune?” Then, in quieter tones, she added with a sigh, “Ah, you don’t know, Geoffrey, how intensely bitter my strange, adventurous life has been. You believe, no doubt, that a woman of my character cannot love. Well, I thought so once. But I tell you that in London I loved one man; the only man I ever met that I could marry. I had renounced my past, and sought to lead a new life when I knew that he cared for me, and was preparing to make me his wife. But she, the Grand Duchess who tricked you so cleverly, came between us, and we were parted. Then I came here, to Russia, sought solace among my former companions, the scum of the gaols and ghettos, and have now descended in despair to what I am. By her, the woman you ask me to free from a terrible thraldom, I have been thrust back into hopelessness, and have lost for ever the one chance I had of joy and love.”

Then, covering her handsome face with her hands, she burst into a torrent of tears.

“Come,” I said, rising, and stroking her soft, silky hair. Her arms were upon the table, and she had buried her head in them, sobbing as if her heart would break. “Come, do not give way,” I urged. “Who was the man you loved?”

“That concerns no one but myself,” she murmured. “Even she has never had proof that we loved one another. Yet to her is due all this grief, that has fallen upon me.”

Raising her head, she strove to suppress her emotion, and her brilliant tear-bedewed eyes fixed themselves steadily upon mine.

“I may perhaps be able to assist you,” I said. “I did on a former occasion.”

“No,” she answered, in a voice of intense sorrow. “I have now grown careless of myself, careless of life, careless of everything since I left London. With the man I loved so truly I could have been happy always, yet she knew my past, and would allow me no chance to redeem myself. It is but what I deserve, I suppose, therefore I must suffer. But can you wonder that, hating the world as I do, I entertain a certain grim satisfaction in being leader of this ragged, ruffianly band of frontier free-lances?”

“No,” I answered, echoing her sigh; “I am scarcely surprised, yet I cannot think that my wife, who was your friend, would willingly serve you as you believe.”

“She did,” Sonia answered, again raising her sad, dark eyes. “She alone I have to thank for the sorrow that has wrecked my life.”

“What was the name of the man you loved?” I asked. “Do I know him?”

“Yes, you know him; but his name is of no consequence,” she answered evasively, in a faint voice, lowering her eyes. “My secret is best kept in my own heart.”

“If my wife did it unintentionally, without knowing you were lovers, there is some excuse,” I said, half apologetically.

“No,” she answered, with sudden harshness. “No excuse is possible. There were other circumstances which rendered her conduct unpardonable.”

“I really can’t believe it,” I said. “I feel certain that she would never have exposed you willingly.”

“Alas!” she said at last, “the evil is now done, and the stigma cannot be removed. But you asked me to reveal certain facts that would place her mind at rest, restore her confidence, and give her freedom. I have told you. I have made a confession to you that no other person has had from my lips.”

“Ah, do not be pitiless,” I cried imploringly, feeling assured that she alone knew the truth. Her assertion that she could restore my wife to freedom meant, I knew, the removal of that dark cloud of suspicion and dread that, overshadowing her, held her spellbound by fear. “Think,” I urged, standing close to her, my hand resting upon the bare, unpolished table. “Once when you came to me, a stranger, and I rendered you a service, you promised to perform one for me in return when I desired it. I am now sorely in need of your friendship, and have come to you for aid.”

“We shall be friends always, I hope, Geoffrey,” she answered quietly, pushing back her dark hair from her brow. Her head was untidy and her hair tangled, for so callous had she grown that she took no heed either of attire or personal appearance.

“Then you will, at least, fulfil your promise,” I said.

“No,” she replied, with dogged firmness. “In this matter I absolutely refuse. I know how weary and wretched your life must be, with mystery surrounding you as it does, and being compelled to live apart from the woman you love; but, frankly, the fact that her cold, proud Highness fears to acknowledge you, or tell you the truth, is a source of satisfaction to me. She has sown dissension, and is now reaping her harvest of tears.”

The cankerworm of care was eating out my heart, and I resolved to make one final appeal to her better nature, albeit I saw from her demeanour how embittered she was against Ella.

“No effort have I left unattempted to seek some solution of the problem,” I said. “Yet all is unavailing. I have sought the truth from Cecil Bingham, but he refused to utter one word, and referred me to you. He said you knew all.”

“Cecil Bingham!” she cried, suddenly starting. “Do you know him? He was your wife’s friend.”

“Yes,” I answered. “I know that, although I am unaware of the true character of their relationship.”

“Ah!” she ejaculated, and I thought she winced beneath my words. “He sent you here?”

“Yes,” I said. “But before seeing him I had endeavoured to obtain some facts from another of Ella’s acquaintances, Andrew Beck.”

“Andrew Beck?” she repeated in a low, hollow voice, her brows contracting as if mention of his name were unpleasant to her ears. “You were jealous of him once,” she added in a hard, dry tone.

“Yea,” I smiled. “But I am so no longer.”

“Why? I thought from what Ella told me long ago that you had some cause. He certainly was one of her admirers.”

“Yes. But he’s about to be married.”

“Married!” she cried wildly, starting to her feet, her lips moving convulsively. “Andrew Beck?”

I nodded, for a moment surprised; but, suddenly remembering, I took from my pocket-book the newspaper cutting announcing the engagement.

Eagerly her strained eyes read the three formal lines of print, then hastily crushing the piece of paper in her hand she cast it from her with a gesture of anger. Her face was pale and determined, her thin hands, no longer loaded with rings as they once had been, twitched nervously, and I could plainly see the strange convulsion that the unexpected intelligence had caused within her.

“Do you know the—the girl who is to be his wife?” she stammered presently.

“No, we have never met,” I answered. “His marriage does not, however, concern us for the moment. It is of Ella and her strange secret that I seek knowledge. Tell me the truth, Sonia, so that I may be able to place within her hand a weapon wherewith to combat this mysterious enemy she fears.”

There was a long pause. Her breath came and went quickly in hot convulsive gasps. Her hands were so tightly clenched that their nails were driven into the palms; her mouth was firmly set, and in her eyes was a cold, stony stare. The knowledge of Beck’s intended marriage had aroused within her a veritable tumult of passion.

“The truth!” she cried hoarsely at last, her hand upon her throbbing breast. “You ask me to clear suspicion from the woman whose whim it has been to marry you and I refuse, because I should bring her happiness, and remove from her the terror that now holds her enthralled. But I have reconsidered my decision. I—”

“Ah, tell me!” I exclaimed, interrupting her in my eagerness.

“I will speak because my disclosures, remarkable though they may be, will not only bring peace to you and your wife, but will also prove a trifle disconcerting to her companions. Once they hunted me from town to town as a criminal; they will now beg to me for mercy upon their knees.”

“Tell me. Do not conceal the truth longer,” I cried anxiously.

“No. Only in Elizaveta’s presence will I speak,” she answered, in a strained voice quivering with violent emotion. “Let us start for Paris to-night. When the moon rises I will guide you through the forest into Germany; we can cross the Jura by the bridge beyond Absteinen, and from Tilsit take train to Berlin. In two days we can be in Paris. Take me to her,” she said with sudden eagerness, “and you shall both learn facts that will astound you.”

“I am quite ready,” I said; “I knew you alone would prove my friend.”

“No,” she answered, regarding me gravely. “No, Geoffrey. It is a secret full of grim realities and ugly revelations, which, when disclosed, will, I fear, cause you to hate me, and count me among your enemies. But you seek the truth; you shall therefore be satisfied.”

Chapter Thirty Five.Confession.“Her Highness has this moment returned from driving, m’sieur,” answered the big Russian concierge, when, accompanied by Sonia, I entered the hall of the great house in the Avenue des Champs Elysées, and handed him a card.Then a second servant, in the blue-and-gold livery of the Romanoffs, conducted us ceremoniously along the wide, soft-carpeted corridor to the well-remembered room wherein I had taken leave of the woman I loved. My companion, in her neat, tailor-made travelling gown of dark grey cloth, looked a very different person to the dirty, unkempt peasant woman who led that band of desperate gaol-birds on the frontier, and as she glanced around the fine apartment on entering, she observed, with a slight sigh, that this was not her first visit.The afternoon was breathless. All Paris had left for the plages of Arcachon, Dieppe, or Trouville, or the baths of Royat, Vichy or Luchon, and the boulevards were given over to unhappy business men,caféloungers, and soft-hatted, gaping tourists in check tweeds. The green jalousies of the room were closed, the senses were suffused with a tender and restful twilight, for the glare had been tempered to suit the dreamy languor of that great mansion’s world-weary mistress. The open windows admitted, with air, the faint sound of traffic from the Avenue. A lad passing somewhere outside whistled a few bars from the gay chansonette, “Si qu’on leur-z-y, f’rait ça,” which Judic was singing nightly with enormous success at the Summer Alcazar. I noticed that upon the piano there still stood my own photograph, while that of my betrayer had been replaced by a picture of my wife.With my back to the great tiled hearth, filled with ferns and flowers, and surrounded by its wonderful mantel of Italian sculptured marble, I waited, while Sonia, fatigued after our long and dusty journey, sank into one of the silken armchairs, unloosened her coat, and sniffed at her little silver bottle of smelling-salts. Scarce a word had she uttered during our drive across the city from the Gare de Lyon, so full she seemed of unutterable sadness.During several minutes we remained in silence, when, without warning, the long doors of white-and-gold were flung open by the flunkey who, advancing into the room, announced his mistress.Next instant we were face to face.“Ah! Geoffrey. At last!” she cried, with flushed cheeks, a smile of glad welcome lighting up her pale countenance as she rushed towards me with both hands outstretched. A second later, noticing Sonia, she suddenly halted. Instantly a change passed over her face. She was unlike the gay, light-hearted girl who loved to idle up the quiet Thames backwaters, or punt along the banks at sundown. She was different from the happy, trustful bride who had wandered with me during those autumn days in quaint old Chateauroux. She had none of the flush of joyous youth, and the harder lines of resolve and determination were softened by an expression for which there is no better word than consecration. There were signs of endurance in her face, but it was the endurance of the martyr, not of the champion.Facing Sonia, she drew herself up haughtily, and demanded in French in a harsh, angry voice,—“To what, pray, do I owe this intrusion? I should have thought that after what has passed you would not dare to come here. But I suppose cool audacity is a characteristic which must be cultivated by a woman of your character.”Sonia rose slowly from her chair, her features haggard and blanched, her head bent slightly, as if in penitence. No effort did she make to resent the bitter, angry words my wife had uttered, but in a low tone simply replied,—“I have come here with Geoffrey, to tell you the truth.”“The truth!” echoed the Grand Duchess, with withering contempt. “The truth from such as you! Who would believe it?”“Wait! Hear me before you denounce me,” Sonia urged, in a strange, hollow voice, that sounded like one speaking in the far distance. “I do not deny that my presence may seem unwarrantable. I admit that between us there can no longer be friendship, yet strange it is that, although you are honest, upright and respected, while I am a social outcast, spurned and degraded by all, there nevertheless exists a common bond between us—the bond of love. You love Geoffrey, the man who by law is your husband; while I love another, a man you also know;” and her voice faltered, “the man to whom you denounced me as base and worthless.”“Well?” asked Ella, standing stern, upright, full of calm, unruffled dignity. She still wore the cool-looking summer gown in which she had been driving in the Bois, and had not removed her large black hat with its long ostrich plumes.“You are quite right, quite right,” Sonia admitted in a voice trembling with emotion. “You were justified to undeceive him as you did. I know, alas! how black is my heart—how blunted is all the womanly feeling I once possessed, like you. But you have been nurtured in the lap of luxury, while I, fed from infancy upon the offal of a slum, and taught to regard the world from a cynical point of view, have grown old in evil-doing, and am now a mere derelict in the stream of life. Long ago we met, and parted. I treated you, as I did others, as an enemy. We have now met again, and I, conscience-stricken and penitent, have come to atone for the past—to prove your friend, to beg forgiveness.”My wife shrugged her shoulders with a gesture of quick impatience.“Ah! You don’t believe I am in earnest,” cried the unhappy woman. “Has it never occurred to you that I alone can free you from the bond that has held you aloof from your husband?”“What do you mean?” cried Ella, with a puzzled expression.“I mean,” she answered, in a deep, earnest voice. “I mean that if you will make full and open confession to Geoffrey I will furnish you with proof positive of the identity of the murderer of Dudley Ogle. By this means only can you obtain freedom from your bondage of guilt.”“My freedom!” echoed my wife. She was pale as death; her hot, dry lips moved convulsively, and she glanced at me in feverish apprehension. “How can you give me my freedom?”“By revealing the truth,” Sonia answered. “When you have told Geoffrey all, then will I disclose the terrible secret that I have selfishly kept from you because I envied you your happiness.”The silence remained unbroken for some moments. Ella stood with her gloved hands clasped before her. The haughty demeanour of the daughter of the Romanoffs had entirely forsaken her; with head bent she stood immovable as a statue. Terror and despair showed themselves in her clear, bright eyes. It seemed as though she mistrusted this woman of evil repute, whose assertions half induced her to confess to me.“Come,” Sonia said, “speak, and freedom, love and happiness are yours.”Her breast, beneath its lace and flimsy muslin, heaved and fell. Her fingers hitched themselves nervously in the trimming of her gown. Then, at last, with sudden resolve, she turned, and with terror-stricken eyes fixed upon me, said in English, in low, faltering tone,—“To confess to you, Geoffrey, will cause you to hate, ah! even to curse me. After to-day I fear we shall part never again to meet.”“No, no,” I cried, advancing to take her soft hand in mine. “Tell me your secret. Then let us hear what Sonia has to reveal.”“Ah! mine is a wretched, horrible story of duplicity,” my wife faltered, standing in an attitude of deep dejection. “Although I am a Grand Duchess, the bearer of an Imperial name, I can hope for neither pity nor mercy from you, nor from the world outside.”“Why?”“Because I have foully deceived you. I am a spy!”“A spy!” I gasped, amazed. “What do you mean?”“Listen; I will tell you,” she answered, in a hard, strained voice, swaying slowly forward and clutching at the table for support. “Three years ago, when my mother, the Grand Duchess Nicholas, was still alive, we were spending some months as usual at our winter villa that faced the Mediterranean at St Eugene, close to Algiers, and my mother engaged asvalet de chambrean Englishman. Soon this man grew, I suppose, to admire me. He pestered me with hateful attentions, and at last had the audacity to declare his love. As may be readily imagined, I scornfully rejected him, treated him with contempt, and finding that he still continued his protestations, meeting me when I went for walks along the sea-road to Algiers, or under the palms and orange groves in the Jardin Marengo, I one day in a fit of ill-temper, disclosed to my mother the whole of the circumstances. The fellow was at once discharged, but before he left for Europe he wrote me a letter full of bitter reproach, and expressed his determination to some day wreak vengeance upon me, as well as upon a young Englishman whom he suspected that I loved. His suspicions, however, were entirely unfounded. I, known at home and throughout all our family by the pet name of ‘Tcherno-okaya,’ or ‘Sparkling Eyes,’ a nickname taken from our Russian poet Lermontoff, had met this young Englishman quite casually, when one day, while passing through the Kasbah, I was insulted by two half-drunken Arabs, and he escorted me home. Then, when we parted, he told me that he was staying at the Hôtel de la Régence, opposite the great white mosque, and gave me his name. It was Dudley Ogle.”

“Her Highness has this moment returned from driving, m’sieur,” answered the big Russian concierge, when, accompanied by Sonia, I entered the hall of the great house in the Avenue des Champs Elysées, and handed him a card.

Then a second servant, in the blue-and-gold livery of the Romanoffs, conducted us ceremoniously along the wide, soft-carpeted corridor to the well-remembered room wherein I had taken leave of the woman I loved. My companion, in her neat, tailor-made travelling gown of dark grey cloth, looked a very different person to the dirty, unkempt peasant woman who led that band of desperate gaol-birds on the frontier, and as she glanced around the fine apartment on entering, she observed, with a slight sigh, that this was not her first visit.

The afternoon was breathless. All Paris had left for the plages of Arcachon, Dieppe, or Trouville, or the baths of Royat, Vichy or Luchon, and the boulevards were given over to unhappy business men,caféloungers, and soft-hatted, gaping tourists in check tweeds. The green jalousies of the room were closed, the senses were suffused with a tender and restful twilight, for the glare had been tempered to suit the dreamy languor of that great mansion’s world-weary mistress. The open windows admitted, with air, the faint sound of traffic from the Avenue. A lad passing somewhere outside whistled a few bars from the gay chansonette, “Si qu’on leur-z-y, f’rait ça,” which Judic was singing nightly with enormous success at the Summer Alcazar. I noticed that upon the piano there still stood my own photograph, while that of my betrayer had been replaced by a picture of my wife.

With my back to the great tiled hearth, filled with ferns and flowers, and surrounded by its wonderful mantel of Italian sculptured marble, I waited, while Sonia, fatigued after our long and dusty journey, sank into one of the silken armchairs, unloosened her coat, and sniffed at her little silver bottle of smelling-salts. Scarce a word had she uttered during our drive across the city from the Gare de Lyon, so full she seemed of unutterable sadness.

During several minutes we remained in silence, when, without warning, the long doors of white-and-gold were flung open by the flunkey who, advancing into the room, announced his mistress.

Next instant we were face to face.

“Ah! Geoffrey. At last!” she cried, with flushed cheeks, a smile of glad welcome lighting up her pale countenance as she rushed towards me with both hands outstretched. A second later, noticing Sonia, she suddenly halted. Instantly a change passed over her face. She was unlike the gay, light-hearted girl who loved to idle up the quiet Thames backwaters, or punt along the banks at sundown. She was different from the happy, trustful bride who had wandered with me during those autumn days in quaint old Chateauroux. She had none of the flush of joyous youth, and the harder lines of resolve and determination were softened by an expression for which there is no better word than consecration. There were signs of endurance in her face, but it was the endurance of the martyr, not of the champion.

Facing Sonia, she drew herself up haughtily, and demanded in French in a harsh, angry voice,—

“To what, pray, do I owe this intrusion? I should have thought that after what has passed you would not dare to come here. But I suppose cool audacity is a characteristic which must be cultivated by a woman of your character.”

Sonia rose slowly from her chair, her features haggard and blanched, her head bent slightly, as if in penitence. No effort did she make to resent the bitter, angry words my wife had uttered, but in a low tone simply replied,—

“I have come here with Geoffrey, to tell you the truth.”

“The truth!” echoed the Grand Duchess, with withering contempt. “The truth from such as you! Who would believe it?”

“Wait! Hear me before you denounce me,” Sonia urged, in a strange, hollow voice, that sounded like one speaking in the far distance. “I do not deny that my presence may seem unwarrantable. I admit that between us there can no longer be friendship, yet strange it is that, although you are honest, upright and respected, while I am a social outcast, spurned and degraded by all, there nevertheless exists a common bond between us—the bond of love. You love Geoffrey, the man who by law is your husband; while I love another, a man you also know;” and her voice faltered, “the man to whom you denounced me as base and worthless.”

“Well?” asked Ella, standing stern, upright, full of calm, unruffled dignity. She still wore the cool-looking summer gown in which she had been driving in the Bois, and had not removed her large black hat with its long ostrich plumes.

“You are quite right, quite right,” Sonia admitted in a voice trembling with emotion. “You were justified to undeceive him as you did. I know, alas! how black is my heart—how blunted is all the womanly feeling I once possessed, like you. But you have been nurtured in the lap of luxury, while I, fed from infancy upon the offal of a slum, and taught to regard the world from a cynical point of view, have grown old in evil-doing, and am now a mere derelict in the stream of life. Long ago we met, and parted. I treated you, as I did others, as an enemy. We have now met again, and I, conscience-stricken and penitent, have come to atone for the past—to prove your friend, to beg forgiveness.”

My wife shrugged her shoulders with a gesture of quick impatience.

“Ah! You don’t believe I am in earnest,” cried the unhappy woman. “Has it never occurred to you that I alone can free you from the bond that has held you aloof from your husband?”

“What do you mean?” cried Ella, with a puzzled expression.

“I mean,” she answered, in a deep, earnest voice. “I mean that if you will make full and open confession to Geoffrey I will furnish you with proof positive of the identity of the murderer of Dudley Ogle. By this means only can you obtain freedom from your bondage of guilt.”

“My freedom!” echoed my wife. She was pale as death; her hot, dry lips moved convulsively, and she glanced at me in feverish apprehension. “How can you give me my freedom?”

“By revealing the truth,” Sonia answered. “When you have told Geoffrey all, then will I disclose the terrible secret that I have selfishly kept from you because I envied you your happiness.”

The silence remained unbroken for some moments. Ella stood with her gloved hands clasped before her. The haughty demeanour of the daughter of the Romanoffs had entirely forsaken her; with head bent she stood immovable as a statue. Terror and despair showed themselves in her clear, bright eyes. It seemed as though she mistrusted this woman of evil repute, whose assertions half induced her to confess to me.

“Come,” Sonia said, “speak, and freedom, love and happiness are yours.”

Her breast, beneath its lace and flimsy muslin, heaved and fell. Her fingers hitched themselves nervously in the trimming of her gown. Then, at last, with sudden resolve, she turned, and with terror-stricken eyes fixed upon me, said in English, in low, faltering tone,—

“To confess to you, Geoffrey, will cause you to hate, ah! even to curse me. After to-day I fear we shall part never again to meet.”

“No, no,” I cried, advancing to take her soft hand in mine. “Tell me your secret. Then let us hear what Sonia has to reveal.”

“Ah! mine is a wretched, horrible story of duplicity,” my wife faltered, standing in an attitude of deep dejection. “Although I am a Grand Duchess, the bearer of an Imperial name, I can hope for neither pity nor mercy from you, nor from the world outside.”

“Why?”

“Because I have foully deceived you. I am a spy!”

“A spy!” I gasped, amazed. “What do you mean?”

“Listen; I will tell you,” she answered, in a hard, strained voice, swaying slowly forward and clutching at the table for support. “Three years ago, when my mother, the Grand Duchess Nicholas, was still alive, we were spending some months as usual at our winter villa that faced the Mediterranean at St Eugene, close to Algiers, and my mother engaged asvalet de chambrean Englishman. Soon this man grew, I suppose, to admire me. He pestered me with hateful attentions, and at last had the audacity to declare his love. As may be readily imagined, I scornfully rejected him, treated him with contempt, and finding that he still continued his protestations, meeting me when I went for walks along the sea-road to Algiers, or under the palms and orange groves in the Jardin Marengo, I one day in a fit of ill-temper, disclosed to my mother the whole of the circumstances. The fellow was at once discharged, but before he left for Europe he wrote me a letter full of bitter reproach, and expressed his determination to some day wreak vengeance upon me, as well as upon a young Englishman whom he suspected that I loved. His suspicions, however, were entirely unfounded. I, known at home and throughout all our family by the pet name of ‘Tcherno-okaya,’ or ‘Sparkling Eyes,’ a nickname taken from our Russian poet Lermontoff, had met this young Englishman quite casually, when one day, while passing through the Kasbah, I was insulted by two half-drunken Arabs, and he escorted me home. Then, when we parted, he told me that he was staying at the Hôtel de la Régence, opposite the great white mosque, and gave me his name. It was Dudley Ogle.”

Chapter Thirty Six.The Thrall.“Dudley Ogle!” I echoed in blank amazement. “Are you certain that the servant’s suspicions were devoid of foundation?”“Absolutely,” she answered in quick breathlessness. “In those days I was supercilious and disdainful, being taught to regard my dignity as Grand Duchess with too great a conceit to make amésalliance. My mother used constantly to urge that in the marriages contracted by members of our family love was not absolutely necessary—position was everything. Well, the months went by. We left Algiers, returned to St Petersburg, and soon afterwards my mother died, leaving me alone. I found myself possessor of great wealth, and when, after a period of mourning, I reappeared in society, I was courted and flattered by all sorts and conditions of men. In a year I grew tired of it all and longed to return to England, the land wherein I had spent many years of my youth; therefore I engaged a woman to pose as my mother, and dropping my title, went to London and lived there as Ella Laing. Then I met you,” and she paused, looking earnestly into my face with her deep blue eyes. To me she had embodied everything that was fair, honourable, and pure, yet I had dreaded some sinister peril from an unknown source.“And we loved each other,” I said simply.“Yes,” she went on fervently. “But from the first I was fettered, being unable to act as my heart prompted. I loved you fondly, and knew you wished to make me your wife, yet I dared not to risk such a step without the permission of our House. I went to St Petersburg, explained who and what you were, and craved leave to marry you. A family council was held, but the suggestion was unanimously denounced as a piece of sentimental folly. Ah, shall I ever forget that night? I pleaded to them upon my knees to let me obtain happiness in your love, but they were inexorable and refused. At length, when in a moment of despair I threatened that if shut out from love by the barrier of birth I would end my life, a suggestion was made—a horrible, infamous one, prompted by Makaroff, Minister of the Household. Yet I was ready to commit any act, to do anything in order to secure happiness with you. Permission was given me to marry you on condition that I entered the Secret Service as spy. I appealed personally to the Tzar, but in vain. You were in the Earl of Warnham’s confidence, and it was seen that from you I could obtain information which would be of greatest utility to our Foreign Department.”“So you accepted,” I said sternly.“Yes. I accepted their abominable conditions because I loved you so well, Geoffrey,” she said gloomily, her trembling hand upon my shoulder. “It was not my fault, indeed it wasn’t. If I had known what was to follow I would have killed myself rather than bring about all the trouble and disaster for which I became responsible.”“No,” I said, “don’t speak like that.”“I would,” she declared despairingly. “What followed was a dark, mysterious tragedy, while all the time I knew that you must suspect—that, after all, you might forsake me. Within a week after binding myself irrevocably to the Tzar’s army of spies I made a discovery that held me appalled. I found that my master, the man to whose will I was compelled to submit, was none other than our dischargedvalet de chambre—the man who two years before had declared his love. At the time my mother had engaged him he was already in the Secret Service, and had no doubt kept watch upon us. He came to me at ‘The Nook,’ and, exulting in the fact that I had become his puppet, renewed his protestations of affection. When, frankly, I told him that I hated him and loved only you, he at once informed me, with a grin of satisfaction, that the department in St Petersburg found it compulsory to obtain possession of a copy of a secret convention at that moment being concluded between your country and Germany, and that I must get possession of it at any cost, through you. It was in order that I might betray you that the Imperial permission had been given to our marriage. In indignation I refused, whereupon he threatened to expose me to you as a Russian spy, and I saw only too clearly that any such revelation must end for ever our acquaintance. He cajoled, urged, threatened, and explained all the elaborate precautions that had been taken by two clerks in Russian pay at your Foreign Office in order that on a certain day you should carry the precious document in your pocket, and how he had prepared the dummy envelope sealed with your Minister’s seal. At last—at last, after striving long and vainly against the performance of this ignominious action that I knew must reflect on your honesty, I was compelled to submit. Ah! you can never know what agony I suffered. I verily believe that in those few days the terrible vengeance of that scoundrel drove me insane. The hideous ghost of the past causes me to shudder whenever I think of it.”I echoed her sigh, but no word escaped me. Her revelations were astounding. I had never suspected her of being actually a spy, although the discovery of the stolen convention in her escritoire had lent colour to that view.“I deceived you,” she went on in a hard, monotonous voice. “But only because I loved you so fondly, and dreaded that this man, who had long ago vowed to wreck my life, would expose, and thus part us. Yet I could not bring myself to commit the theft. How could I place upon you—the man who was all in all to me—the stigma of having traitorously sold your country’s secrets? The man who held me enslaved, and whose attentions I had spurned, exulted in his malevolent revenge. Once he offered, if I would renounce all thought of you and treat him with more cordiality, to commit the theft himself; but I refused, determined at all hazards to remain with you as long as possible. Once it was thought that the secret convention would be sent to Warnham Hall, and I was compelled to go down there to devise some means of obtaining it. I found Dudley staying in the village, and we returned to London together. The end must soon come, I knew. Therefore I lived on in daily terror of what must follow. At last the day dawned on which I had to meet you at the Foreign Office, and filch from you the bond of nations. After breakfast I stood out on the lawn by the sunny river’s brink, contemplating suicide rather than your ruin, when there rowed up to the steps Dudley Ogle, who hailed me, inviting me to pull up to Windsor, and there lunch with him. At once I accepted, and after embarking, told him of my dilemma, and besought his assistance. As you know, he was a good amateur conjurer, and skilled in feats of sleight-of-hand. Without thought of the consequences, he resolved to commit the theft for my sake, and when I had fully explained all the facts and given him the dummy envelope that the cunning chief of theOkhrannoë Otdelenïehad prepared, he turned the boat and put me ashore at ‘The Nook,’ afterwards rowing rapidly down to Shepperton to change and go at once to London.”“He did this because he loved you?” I exclaimed sternly.“No,” she answered reassuringly. “Poor Dudley was simply my friend. He called on you and extracted the document from your pocket while you lunched together, because he saw in what a dilemma I was. He knew I loved you dearly, and never once spoke a single word of affection to me. That I swear before Heaven. What followed his visit to Downing Street I have only a hazy idea, so full of awful anxieties was that breathless day. From Waterloo Station he telegraphed to me that he had successfully secured the agreement and handed it to the chief of spies. The latter, who had been waiting in Parliament Street expecting me, seeing him, took in the situation at a glance, and approaching him, asked for the document, which he gave up. An hour afterwards, fearing that you might suspect me, I telegraphed to you at Shepperton to dine with us, well knowing that already the text of the convention was at that moment being transmitted to Petersburg, and that war was imminent. You came; you kissed me. I loved you dearer than life, yet dreaded the frightful consequences of the dastardly act I had instigated. Suddenly, while we were at dinner, and you were laughing, happy and unconscious of the conspiracy against the peace of Europe, a thought flashed across my mind. I well knew that an awful conflict of armed forces must accrue from my deep, despicable cunning, and it occurred to me, as I sat by your side, that I would, using the secret cipher I had been provided with, telegraph to St Petersburg in the name of the chief of spies, assuring our Foreign Department that a mistake had been made. I slipped out, and running down to the telegraph office just before it closed, sent a message to an unsuspicious-looking address, stating that the text of the convention already sent had been discovered to be that of a rejected draft, and not that of the actual defensive alliance which had received the signature of the Emperor William.”“Then it was actually this message of yours that prevented war?” I gasped, in profound astonishment.“Yes,” she answered. “Before receipt of my telegram all preparations were being made for the commencement of hostilities, but on its arrival the Tzar at once countermanded the mobilisation order, and Europe was thereby spared a terrible and bloody conflict. Ah! that was indeed a memorable night, brought to a conclusion by a dark and terrible tragedy.”Her astounding disclosures held me dumbfounded. I remembered vividly how, during our lunch at the Ship, Dudley had risen and gone out to the bar to speak to an acquaintance. It was at that moment, having stolen the document from me, he glanced at its register number and imitated it upon the dummy with which Ella had provided him.“But how came you possessed of the original of the convention?” I asked.“A week before I fled from you I received it by post anonymously,” she replied. “When compelled by my enemy to leave you and return here to my true position, I unfortunately left it behind, and knew that, sooner or later, you must discover it. The man who, with the Tzar’s authority, held me under the lash, still holds me, the plaything of his spite, and threatens that if I allow you to come here and occupy your rightful place as my husband, he will denounce me to the British Government as a spy. Hence I am still his puppet, still held by a bond of guilt that I dare not break asunder.”“Be patient,” urged Sonia, in a deep, calm voice. “Be patient, and you shall yet be free.”“Ah! Geoffrey,” sobbed my wife, her blanched, tearful face buried in her hands, “you can never, I fear, forgive. After all, notwithstanding the glamour that must surround me as Grand Duchess, I am but a mean, despicable woman who foully betrayed you, the man who loved me.”“You atoned for your crime by your successful effort to preserve the peace of Europe,” I answered.“Yes, yes,” she cried, with a quiver in her voice there was no mistaking for any note save that of love; “but, alas! I am in the power of an unscrupulous knave who parted us because he saw me happy with you. Can you ever forgive me? Can you, now you know of my unworthiness, ever say that you love me as truly as you did in those bygone days at ‘The Nook’? Speak! Tell me?”“Yes,” I answered, fervently pressing her closely in affectionate embrace. “I forgive you everything, darling. You sinned; but, held as you have been by the hateful conditions imposed upon you by a base, unprincipled villain, I cannot blame, but only pity you.”“Then you still love me, Geoffrey?” she cried, panting, gazing up into my face.For answer I bent until my lips met hers in a long fond caress. In those moments of ecstasy I was conscious of having regained the idyllic happiness long lost. Even though her story was full of bitter and terrible sorrow, and rendered gloomy by the tragic death of her self-sacrificing friend, the truth nevertheless brought back to me the joys and pleasures of life that not long ago I believed had departed from me for ever.Again and again our lips met with murmured words of tender passion—she declaring that her crime had been flagitious and unpardonable, yet assuring me of what I now felt convinced, that her love had been unwavering. If it were not that she had resolved to renounce her title and become my wife she would never have fallen beneath the vassalage of the infamous scoundrel who sought her social ruin.Thus we stood together locked in each other’s arms, exchanging once again vows of love eternal, while Sonia stood watching us, sad, silent and motionless, save for a deep sigh that once escaped her. She knew that supreme happiness had come to the woman she had once denounced as my bitterest foe.

“Dudley Ogle!” I echoed in blank amazement. “Are you certain that the servant’s suspicions were devoid of foundation?”

“Absolutely,” she answered in quick breathlessness. “In those days I was supercilious and disdainful, being taught to regard my dignity as Grand Duchess with too great a conceit to make amésalliance. My mother used constantly to urge that in the marriages contracted by members of our family love was not absolutely necessary—position was everything. Well, the months went by. We left Algiers, returned to St Petersburg, and soon afterwards my mother died, leaving me alone. I found myself possessor of great wealth, and when, after a period of mourning, I reappeared in society, I was courted and flattered by all sorts and conditions of men. In a year I grew tired of it all and longed to return to England, the land wherein I had spent many years of my youth; therefore I engaged a woman to pose as my mother, and dropping my title, went to London and lived there as Ella Laing. Then I met you,” and she paused, looking earnestly into my face with her deep blue eyes. To me she had embodied everything that was fair, honourable, and pure, yet I had dreaded some sinister peril from an unknown source.

“And we loved each other,” I said simply.

“Yes,” she went on fervently. “But from the first I was fettered, being unable to act as my heart prompted. I loved you fondly, and knew you wished to make me your wife, yet I dared not to risk such a step without the permission of our House. I went to St Petersburg, explained who and what you were, and craved leave to marry you. A family council was held, but the suggestion was unanimously denounced as a piece of sentimental folly. Ah, shall I ever forget that night? I pleaded to them upon my knees to let me obtain happiness in your love, but they were inexorable and refused. At length, when in a moment of despair I threatened that if shut out from love by the barrier of birth I would end my life, a suggestion was made—a horrible, infamous one, prompted by Makaroff, Minister of the Household. Yet I was ready to commit any act, to do anything in order to secure happiness with you. Permission was given me to marry you on condition that I entered the Secret Service as spy. I appealed personally to the Tzar, but in vain. You were in the Earl of Warnham’s confidence, and it was seen that from you I could obtain information which would be of greatest utility to our Foreign Department.”

“So you accepted,” I said sternly.

“Yes. I accepted their abominable conditions because I loved you so well, Geoffrey,” she said gloomily, her trembling hand upon my shoulder. “It was not my fault, indeed it wasn’t. If I had known what was to follow I would have killed myself rather than bring about all the trouble and disaster for which I became responsible.”

“No,” I said, “don’t speak like that.”

“I would,” she declared despairingly. “What followed was a dark, mysterious tragedy, while all the time I knew that you must suspect—that, after all, you might forsake me. Within a week after binding myself irrevocably to the Tzar’s army of spies I made a discovery that held me appalled. I found that my master, the man to whose will I was compelled to submit, was none other than our dischargedvalet de chambre—the man who two years before had declared his love. At the time my mother had engaged him he was already in the Secret Service, and had no doubt kept watch upon us. He came to me at ‘The Nook,’ and, exulting in the fact that I had become his puppet, renewed his protestations of affection. When, frankly, I told him that I hated him and loved only you, he at once informed me, with a grin of satisfaction, that the department in St Petersburg found it compulsory to obtain possession of a copy of a secret convention at that moment being concluded between your country and Germany, and that I must get possession of it at any cost, through you. It was in order that I might betray you that the Imperial permission had been given to our marriage. In indignation I refused, whereupon he threatened to expose me to you as a Russian spy, and I saw only too clearly that any such revelation must end for ever our acquaintance. He cajoled, urged, threatened, and explained all the elaborate precautions that had been taken by two clerks in Russian pay at your Foreign Office in order that on a certain day you should carry the precious document in your pocket, and how he had prepared the dummy envelope sealed with your Minister’s seal. At last—at last, after striving long and vainly against the performance of this ignominious action that I knew must reflect on your honesty, I was compelled to submit. Ah! you can never know what agony I suffered. I verily believe that in those few days the terrible vengeance of that scoundrel drove me insane. The hideous ghost of the past causes me to shudder whenever I think of it.”

I echoed her sigh, but no word escaped me. Her revelations were astounding. I had never suspected her of being actually a spy, although the discovery of the stolen convention in her escritoire had lent colour to that view.

“I deceived you,” she went on in a hard, monotonous voice. “But only because I loved you so fondly, and dreaded that this man, who had long ago vowed to wreck my life, would expose, and thus part us. Yet I could not bring myself to commit the theft. How could I place upon you—the man who was all in all to me—the stigma of having traitorously sold your country’s secrets? The man who held me enslaved, and whose attentions I had spurned, exulted in his malevolent revenge. Once he offered, if I would renounce all thought of you and treat him with more cordiality, to commit the theft himself; but I refused, determined at all hazards to remain with you as long as possible. Once it was thought that the secret convention would be sent to Warnham Hall, and I was compelled to go down there to devise some means of obtaining it. I found Dudley staying in the village, and we returned to London together. The end must soon come, I knew. Therefore I lived on in daily terror of what must follow. At last the day dawned on which I had to meet you at the Foreign Office, and filch from you the bond of nations. After breakfast I stood out on the lawn by the sunny river’s brink, contemplating suicide rather than your ruin, when there rowed up to the steps Dudley Ogle, who hailed me, inviting me to pull up to Windsor, and there lunch with him. At once I accepted, and after embarking, told him of my dilemma, and besought his assistance. As you know, he was a good amateur conjurer, and skilled in feats of sleight-of-hand. Without thought of the consequences, he resolved to commit the theft for my sake, and when I had fully explained all the facts and given him the dummy envelope that the cunning chief of theOkhrannoë Otdelenïehad prepared, he turned the boat and put me ashore at ‘The Nook,’ afterwards rowing rapidly down to Shepperton to change and go at once to London.”

“He did this because he loved you?” I exclaimed sternly.

“No,” she answered reassuringly. “Poor Dudley was simply my friend. He called on you and extracted the document from your pocket while you lunched together, because he saw in what a dilemma I was. He knew I loved you dearly, and never once spoke a single word of affection to me. That I swear before Heaven. What followed his visit to Downing Street I have only a hazy idea, so full of awful anxieties was that breathless day. From Waterloo Station he telegraphed to me that he had successfully secured the agreement and handed it to the chief of spies. The latter, who had been waiting in Parliament Street expecting me, seeing him, took in the situation at a glance, and approaching him, asked for the document, which he gave up. An hour afterwards, fearing that you might suspect me, I telegraphed to you at Shepperton to dine with us, well knowing that already the text of the convention was at that moment being transmitted to Petersburg, and that war was imminent. You came; you kissed me. I loved you dearer than life, yet dreaded the frightful consequences of the dastardly act I had instigated. Suddenly, while we were at dinner, and you were laughing, happy and unconscious of the conspiracy against the peace of Europe, a thought flashed across my mind. I well knew that an awful conflict of armed forces must accrue from my deep, despicable cunning, and it occurred to me, as I sat by your side, that I would, using the secret cipher I had been provided with, telegraph to St Petersburg in the name of the chief of spies, assuring our Foreign Department that a mistake had been made. I slipped out, and running down to the telegraph office just before it closed, sent a message to an unsuspicious-looking address, stating that the text of the convention already sent had been discovered to be that of a rejected draft, and not that of the actual defensive alliance which had received the signature of the Emperor William.”

“Then it was actually this message of yours that prevented war?” I gasped, in profound astonishment.

“Yes,” she answered. “Before receipt of my telegram all preparations were being made for the commencement of hostilities, but on its arrival the Tzar at once countermanded the mobilisation order, and Europe was thereby spared a terrible and bloody conflict. Ah! that was indeed a memorable night, brought to a conclusion by a dark and terrible tragedy.”

Her astounding disclosures held me dumbfounded. I remembered vividly how, during our lunch at the Ship, Dudley had risen and gone out to the bar to speak to an acquaintance. It was at that moment, having stolen the document from me, he glanced at its register number and imitated it upon the dummy with which Ella had provided him.

“But how came you possessed of the original of the convention?” I asked.

“A week before I fled from you I received it by post anonymously,” she replied. “When compelled by my enemy to leave you and return here to my true position, I unfortunately left it behind, and knew that, sooner or later, you must discover it. The man who, with the Tzar’s authority, held me under the lash, still holds me, the plaything of his spite, and threatens that if I allow you to come here and occupy your rightful place as my husband, he will denounce me to the British Government as a spy. Hence I am still his puppet, still held by a bond of guilt that I dare not break asunder.”

“Be patient,” urged Sonia, in a deep, calm voice. “Be patient, and you shall yet be free.”

“Ah! Geoffrey,” sobbed my wife, her blanched, tearful face buried in her hands, “you can never, I fear, forgive. After all, notwithstanding the glamour that must surround me as Grand Duchess, I am but a mean, despicable woman who foully betrayed you, the man who loved me.”

“You atoned for your crime by your successful effort to preserve the peace of Europe,” I answered.

“Yes, yes,” she cried, with a quiver in her voice there was no mistaking for any note save that of love; “but, alas! I am in the power of an unscrupulous knave who parted us because he saw me happy with you. Can you ever forgive me? Can you, now you know of my unworthiness, ever say that you love me as truly as you did in those bygone days at ‘The Nook’? Speak! Tell me?”

“Yes,” I answered, fervently pressing her closely in affectionate embrace. “I forgive you everything, darling. You sinned; but, held as you have been by the hateful conditions imposed upon you by a base, unprincipled villain, I cannot blame, but only pity you.”

“Then you still love me, Geoffrey?” she cried, panting, gazing up into my face.

For answer I bent until my lips met hers in a long fond caress. In those moments of ecstasy I was conscious of having regained the idyllic happiness long lost. Even though her story was full of bitter and terrible sorrow, and rendered gloomy by the tragic death of her self-sacrificing friend, the truth nevertheless brought back to me the joys and pleasures of life that not long ago I believed had departed from me for ever.

Again and again our lips met with murmured words of tender passion—she declaring that her crime had been flagitious and unpardonable, yet assuring me of what I now felt convinced, that her love had been unwavering. If it were not that she had resolved to renounce her title and become my wife she would never have fallen beneath the vassalage of the infamous scoundrel who sought her social ruin.

Thus we stood together locked in each other’s arms, exchanging once again vows of love eternal, while Sonia stood watching us, sad, silent and motionless, save for a deep sigh that once escaped her. She knew that supreme happiness had come to the woman she had once denounced as my bitterest foe.

Chapter Thirty Seven.Conclusion.It was four o’clock on the following afternoon. The black, iron-studded doors of the Bank of England were just closing. The beadle mopped his brow. The traffic around the Royal Exchange was becoming more congested, as it generally does at that hour, and perspiring clerks hurrying along Threadneedle Street sought the shady side, for the sun was still powerful. So hot indeed was the season that general permission had been granted everywhere in the City to wear the jacket suit and straw headgear reminiscent of Margate, in place of the conventional silk hat and frock coat. Although in the West the houses were mostly closed, and thousands were absent in the country and by the sea, the great, turbulent, bustling crowd that constitutes business London showed no sign of inactivity or decrease as, accompanied by my wife and Sonia, I walked up Old Broad Street to that pile of offices known as Winchester House, through the swing doors of which passed a constant stream of hurrying clerks.By the lift we ascended to the second floor, and then passed down a long corridor to a door on which was inscribed the name “Mr Andrew Beck.” We entered a large office of business-like aspect, where some dozen clerks were busy writing, and were informed that their principal, although absent, would return in a few minutes, therefore we decided to wait, and were ushered into a comfortable private room, one door of which opened on to the corridor.Scarcely had we been seated a few moments when the click of a latch-key was heard in the door, and my friend Beck entered. He was well-dressed as usual, with a green-tinted carnation in his button-hole, and a glossy hat with brim of the latest curl stuck a trifle rakishly upon his head. The instant he confronted us the light died out of his face.He drew himself up with a quick look of suspicion, while from his lips there escaped a muttered imprecation. Without further ado he turned on his heel, as if preparing to make a hurried exit, but in a moment Sonia, detecting his intention, sprang towards the door and prevented him.“Well?” he asked, with a sorry endeavour to remain cool, “why are you all here? This is an unexpected pleasure, I assure you.”It was Sonia who, standing before him with dark, flashing eyes, answered in a tone of fierce hatred and contempt,—“I have come, Andrew, to present my congratulations upon your forthcoming marriage,” she said, with her pronounced foreign accent.“They could have been conveyed by a penny stamp,” he retorted impatiently.“You taunt me, do you?” she cried in a towering passion. “You, the cunning, cowardly spy whom I shielded because you professed love for me. Had I spoken long ago you would have met with your deserts, either at the hands of the Nihilists, or at those of justice. Although myself a criminal I yearned for love, and foolishly believing that you cared for me, preserved the secret of your guilt, allowing you to wreck the happiness of Geoffrey Deedes, the man who twice proved my friend, and of Elizaveta, the only honest woman who ever spoke kindly to me or endeavoured to induce me to reform. Because you were chief of the Tzar’s spies and I was notorious, with plenty of money always at command, you imagined that you held me irrevocably. Well, for a time, you did. Your false protestations of affection caused me to refrain from exposing your base, cunning, heartless infamy. It was you, with your renegade underling Renouf, who contrived to get me introduced to Elizaveta in order to further your own ends; but it was you also, when fearing that I might make some ugly revelations, made unfounded allegations against me to General Sekerzhinski, and informed him of my whereabouts, so that I was compelled to fly from Pembroke Road and seek shelter where I could.”His eyes were fixed upon her with a look of fierce hatred, and he muttered some incoherent words between his teeth.“Yes,” she went on defiantly, “I know you are anxious to close my lips, because of the startling disclosures it is within my power to make. The Department in St Petersburg have in you a keen, cunning spy, but when it becomes known throughout England that Andrew Beck, the popular Member for West Rutlandshire, is in the pay of the Russian Government, do you anticipate that you will still occupy your seat in the House of Commons, or at the Committee you have so ingeniously obtained for the investigation of the strength of England’s defences?”He started. His face was ashen pale; his cigar dropped from his nerveless, trembling fingers.“Geoffrey,” she went on, “has already heard from Elizaveta how cleverly you tricked her, and with what dastard knavishness you compelled her to instigate the theft of the secret convention. She—”“Then the world shall know that the Grand Duchess Elizaveta Nicolayevna is in the Secret Service!” he cried fiercely. “She has betrayed her country and her kinsman, the Emperor!”Sonia, smiling in contempt, said,—“The denunciation will be your own condemnation.”“Why? What have I to lose?” he asked indignantly. “Your life. The police have not yet forgotten the tragedy at ‘The Nook.’”He glared at her open-mouthed.“Perhaps it may be well at this moment to recall some facts that you may have found convenient to forget,” she went on ruthlessly, while I, standing beside Ella, drank in eagerly every word. “You will remember where you reduced the stolen document to cipher, imitating Dudley’s handwriting on the telegraph forms. It was at my house. The envelope containing the agreement had been opened in the ‘cabinet noir’ at the Embassy, the intention being to replace it at the Foreign Office. But it was I who broke the seal. In your hurry you left the document behind, and even when you returned two hours later, your mind was so full of other things that you did not remember it; so I gummed down the cut edges, and sent it afterwards to Elizaveta. When you came the second time you had with you a pair of men’s gloves. Whose they were I knew not, but you got me to sew inside the index-finger of the left hand a tiny, jagged splinter of glass, and upon that glass, when you thought I did not observe you, you smeared some of that fluid that Ruyandez, the Haytian merchant, had given me long ago. That poison I kept locked away in a small cabinet, but many months before I had shown it to you and explained that it was some of that used by the Obeah men, and so rapid was it in effect that one single drop would cause paralysis of the heart within five minutes without leaving any trace of poison. You obtained a key to that cabinet, for when I had gone from the room on that afternoon I watched you unlock it, take out the reed containing the decoction, and prepare the glove.”“Liar!” gasped Beck. “I didn’t touch it.”“The glove,” she continued, “belonged to Dudley Ogle. That day Elizaveta had told him that you, a member of the English Parliament, was the chief of Russian spies, and you feared lest he should expose you, as no doubt he would have done if you had not, with cowardly cunning, taken his life.”“Murderer!” cried Ella, amazed. “You—you killed him! Ah! I suspected it. Tell us, Sonia, how it was accomplished.”“The gloves this man brought to my house were a pair he had taken up by mistake when at Shepperton on the previous evening. For cool and desperate plotting, the manner in which he killed the man he feared was astounding, for, having introduced into the finger of the glove the tiny piece of glass, he, during that evening at ‘The Nook,’ took out his victim’s gloves from his overcoat in the hall and replaced them by those prepared. When Dudley left to walk home he bade farewell to you, and at once proceeding to put on his gloves, received a scratch on the finger so slight as to be almost unnoticeable, yet within five minutes the effects of the poison had reached his heart, and he was beyond human aid.”“Amazing!” I cried, regarding my whilom friend with intense loathing as he stood before us, his face a ghastly hue.“It’s untrue! Who will believe such a woman?” he cried.“Everyone will,” Sonia retorted quickly. “See, here is the proof,” and she drew from her pocket a well-worn suède glove of dark grey, which I recognised at once as being one of the kind always worn by Dudley. “The splinter of glass is still inside.”The man who had led the double life of spy and legislator, and who had amassed a great fortune in his speculations in African gold, stood livid, with terror-stricken eyes riveted upon the evidence of his crime, like one transfixed.“The Tzar will have no further employment for a murderer,” exclaimed Ella at last. “Neither will the House of Commons permit a spy to sit in its midst. When I consented to enter the Secret Service of His Majesty, it was with one object—to obtain permission to marry. This I have attained, and because of Geoffrey’s generosity and free forgiveness I have now no further fear of the opinion of the world or of revelations by a man who is proved to be a murderer. At last I have secured freedom from your hateful tie.”“Then you intend to denounce me?” Beck cried, glancing round with a wild, hunted look.“Twenty-four hours from now I shall place Lord Warnham in possession of the whole of these curious facts. If you are still upon English soil, you will be arrested for the murder of my friend,” I answered calmly. “I see plainly how, while I left you alone with the dead man, you placed in his pocket the brass seal found upon him, and how cleverly you managed to introduce the bogus passport and evidences of forgery among his possessions. Yours was a devilish ingenuity, indeed.”“If I fly you will not follow?” he gasped eagerly.“Wherever you may hide you will be followed by your guilt,” I answered. “A murderer can hope for no forgiveness from his fellow-men.”With his chin sunk upon his breast, and his wild eyes downcast, he stood in silence, leaning heavily against the wall. Then, slowly, with a final look upon him, I passed out behind my wife and the pale-faced woman who had so clearly substantiated her terrible charge. The vengeance he had sought to bring upon Ella had fallen upon him and completely crushed him.In the library at Berkeley Square on the following afternoon I explained the whole of the startling facts, to the wizened, ascetic old Earl, who sat speechless in amazement when he realised that Andrew Beck was actually a foreign spy. It was during the conversation that followed I learnt that the man who had been loved by Sonia was Cecil Bingham, the young country gentleman who, known to both, had sought to assist Ella in unearthing the identity of Dudley’s murderer. Sonia had misjudged my wife entirely, for she had never denounced her to Cecil, and the latter, being at that moment a guest in the Earl’s house, was sent for, and before us all the pair became reconciled.Elizaveta Nicolayevna, or Ella, as I still call her, has now renounced her country, and become thoroughly English. A year ago Lord Warnham, assured of my wife’s probity—for greatly to Monsieur Grodekoff’s dismay, she had given some valuable information regarding the activity of the Russian Secret Service at Downing Street—appointed me to a responsible post at our Embassy in Paris, so that we now live together at the big white house in the Avenue des Champs Elysées, while Sonia and Cecil are also married and live quietly in a quaint old manor-house near Winchester.It was only the other day, however, that we heard mention of Andrew Beck, the popular legislator who so mysteriously accepted stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds. There was a paragraph in the newspapers stating that he had been found drowned in the Scheldt, near Antwerp, and foul play was suspected. Then Ella explained to me that the woman who had passed as her mother, Mrs Laing, was, she afterwards discovered, a well-known Nihilist, and it was in order to keep observation upon her that the detective Renouf had entered her service. This woman, whose real name was Sophie Grunsberg, was greatly incensed against Beck on account of certain false accusations he had made against members of the revolutionary organisation, and there was little doubt that he had fallen beneath their far-reaching vengeance.Here, as I pen these last few lines of my strange story of England’s peril, my own betrayal, and my wife’s fond love, Ella, with sweet, glad smile, moves forward to stroke my hair with soft, caressing hand. The odour of sampaguita pervades her chiffons, stirring within me memories of the past. We are together in the room I know so well, with its great windows overlooking the leafy Avenue. It is warm, the sun-shutters are closed, and from somewhere outside the gay air, “Si qu’on leur-z-y f’rait ça” is borne in upon the summer wind.At last our days are full of passionate love and idyllic happiness. Verily there is great truth in those words of Holy Writ, “Whoso findeth a wife, findeth a good thing.”The End.

It was four o’clock on the following afternoon. The black, iron-studded doors of the Bank of England were just closing. The beadle mopped his brow. The traffic around the Royal Exchange was becoming more congested, as it generally does at that hour, and perspiring clerks hurrying along Threadneedle Street sought the shady side, for the sun was still powerful. So hot indeed was the season that general permission had been granted everywhere in the City to wear the jacket suit and straw headgear reminiscent of Margate, in place of the conventional silk hat and frock coat. Although in the West the houses were mostly closed, and thousands were absent in the country and by the sea, the great, turbulent, bustling crowd that constitutes business London showed no sign of inactivity or decrease as, accompanied by my wife and Sonia, I walked up Old Broad Street to that pile of offices known as Winchester House, through the swing doors of which passed a constant stream of hurrying clerks.

By the lift we ascended to the second floor, and then passed down a long corridor to a door on which was inscribed the name “Mr Andrew Beck.” We entered a large office of business-like aspect, where some dozen clerks were busy writing, and were informed that their principal, although absent, would return in a few minutes, therefore we decided to wait, and were ushered into a comfortable private room, one door of which opened on to the corridor.

Scarcely had we been seated a few moments when the click of a latch-key was heard in the door, and my friend Beck entered. He was well-dressed as usual, with a green-tinted carnation in his button-hole, and a glossy hat with brim of the latest curl stuck a trifle rakishly upon his head. The instant he confronted us the light died out of his face.

He drew himself up with a quick look of suspicion, while from his lips there escaped a muttered imprecation. Without further ado he turned on his heel, as if preparing to make a hurried exit, but in a moment Sonia, detecting his intention, sprang towards the door and prevented him.

“Well?” he asked, with a sorry endeavour to remain cool, “why are you all here? This is an unexpected pleasure, I assure you.”

It was Sonia who, standing before him with dark, flashing eyes, answered in a tone of fierce hatred and contempt,—

“I have come, Andrew, to present my congratulations upon your forthcoming marriage,” she said, with her pronounced foreign accent.

“They could have been conveyed by a penny stamp,” he retorted impatiently.

“You taunt me, do you?” she cried in a towering passion. “You, the cunning, cowardly spy whom I shielded because you professed love for me. Had I spoken long ago you would have met with your deserts, either at the hands of the Nihilists, or at those of justice. Although myself a criminal I yearned for love, and foolishly believing that you cared for me, preserved the secret of your guilt, allowing you to wreck the happiness of Geoffrey Deedes, the man who twice proved my friend, and of Elizaveta, the only honest woman who ever spoke kindly to me or endeavoured to induce me to reform. Because you were chief of the Tzar’s spies and I was notorious, with plenty of money always at command, you imagined that you held me irrevocably. Well, for a time, you did. Your false protestations of affection caused me to refrain from exposing your base, cunning, heartless infamy. It was you, with your renegade underling Renouf, who contrived to get me introduced to Elizaveta in order to further your own ends; but it was you also, when fearing that I might make some ugly revelations, made unfounded allegations against me to General Sekerzhinski, and informed him of my whereabouts, so that I was compelled to fly from Pembroke Road and seek shelter where I could.”

His eyes were fixed upon her with a look of fierce hatred, and he muttered some incoherent words between his teeth.

“Yes,” she went on defiantly, “I know you are anxious to close my lips, because of the startling disclosures it is within my power to make. The Department in St Petersburg have in you a keen, cunning spy, but when it becomes known throughout England that Andrew Beck, the popular Member for West Rutlandshire, is in the pay of the Russian Government, do you anticipate that you will still occupy your seat in the House of Commons, or at the Committee you have so ingeniously obtained for the investigation of the strength of England’s defences?”

He started. His face was ashen pale; his cigar dropped from his nerveless, trembling fingers.

“Geoffrey,” she went on, “has already heard from Elizaveta how cleverly you tricked her, and with what dastard knavishness you compelled her to instigate the theft of the secret convention. She—”

“Then the world shall know that the Grand Duchess Elizaveta Nicolayevna is in the Secret Service!” he cried fiercely. “She has betrayed her country and her kinsman, the Emperor!”

Sonia, smiling in contempt, said,—

“The denunciation will be your own condemnation.”

“Why? What have I to lose?” he asked indignantly. “Your life. The police have not yet forgotten the tragedy at ‘The Nook.’”

He glared at her open-mouthed.

“Perhaps it may be well at this moment to recall some facts that you may have found convenient to forget,” she went on ruthlessly, while I, standing beside Ella, drank in eagerly every word. “You will remember where you reduced the stolen document to cipher, imitating Dudley’s handwriting on the telegraph forms. It was at my house. The envelope containing the agreement had been opened in the ‘cabinet noir’ at the Embassy, the intention being to replace it at the Foreign Office. But it was I who broke the seal. In your hurry you left the document behind, and even when you returned two hours later, your mind was so full of other things that you did not remember it; so I gummed down the cut edges, and sent it afterwards to Elizaveta. When you came the second time you had with you a pair of men’s gloves. Whose they were I knew not, but you got me to sew inside the index-finger of the left hand a tiny, jagged splinter of glass, and upon that glass, when you thought I did not observe you, you smeared some of that fluid that Ruyandez, the Haytian merchant, had given me long ago. That poison I kept locked away in a small cabinet, but many months before I had shown it to you and explained that it was some of that used by the Obeah men, and so rapid was it in effect that one single drop would cause paralysis of the heart within five minutes without leaving any trace of poison. You obtained a key to that cabinet, for when I had gone from the room on that afternoon I watched you unlock it, take out the reed containing the decoction, and prepare the glove.”

“Liar!” gasped Beck. “I didn’t touch it.”

“The glove,” she continued, “belonged to Dudley Ogle. That day Elizaveta had told him that you, a member of the English Parliament, was the chief of Russian spies, and you feared lest he should expose you, as no doubt he would have done if you had not, with cowardly cunning, taken his life.”

“Murderer!” cried Ella, amazed. “You—you killed him! Ah! I suspected it. Tell us, Sonia, how it was accomplished.”

“The gloves this man brought to my house were a pair he had taken up by mistake when at Shepperton on the previous evening. For cool and desperate plotting, the manner in which he killed the man he feared was astounding, for, having introduced into the finger of the glove the tiny piece of glass, he, during that evening at ‘The Nook,’ took out his victim’s gloves from his overcoat in the hall and replaced them by those prepared. When Dudley left to walk home he bade farewell to you, and at once proceeding to put on his gloves, received a scratch on the finger so slight as to be almost unnoticeable, yet within five minutes the effects of the poison had reached his heart, and he was beyond human aid.”

“Amazing!” I cried, regarding my whilom friend with intense loathing as he stood before us, his face a ghastly hue.

“It’s untrue! Who will believe such a woman?” he cried.

“Everyone will,” Sonia retorted quickly. “See, here is the proof,” and she drew from her pocket a well-worn suède glove of dark grey, which I recognised at once as being one of the kind always worn by Dudley. “The splinter of glass is still inside.”

The man who had led the double life of spy and legislator, and who had amassed a great fortune in his speculations in African gold, stood livid, with terror-stricken eyes riveted upon the evidence of his crime, like one transfixed.

“The Tzar will have no further employment for a murderer,” exclaimed Ella at last. “Neither will the House of Commons permit a spy to sit in its midst. When I consented to enter the Secret Service of His Majesty, it was with one object—to obtain permission to marry. This I have attained, and because of Geoffrey’s generosity and free forgiveness I have now no further fear of the opinion of the world or of revelations by a man who is proved to be a murderer. At last I have secured freedom from your hateful tie.”

“Then you intend to denounce me?” Beck cried, glancing round with a wild, hunted look.

“Twenty-four hours from now I shall place Lord Warnham in possession of the whole of these curious facts. If you are still upon English soil, you will be arrested for the murder of my friend,” I answered calmly. “I see plainly how, while I left you alone with the dead man, you placed in his pocket the brass seal found upon him, and how cleverly you managed to introduce the bogus passport and evidences of forgery among his possessions. Yours was a devilish ingenuity, indeed.”

“If I fly you will not follow?” he gasped eagerly.

“Wherever you may hide you will be followed by your guilt,” I answered. “A murderer can hope for no forgiveness from his fellow-men.”

With his chin sunk upon his breast, and his wild eyes downcast, he stood in silence, leaning heavily against the wall. Then, slowly, with a final look upon him, I passed out behind my wife and the pale-faced woman who had so clearly substantiated her terrible charge. The vengeance he had sought to bring upon Ella had fallen upon him and completely crushed him.

In the library at Berkeley Square on the following afternoon I explained the whole of the startling facts, to the wizened, ascetic old Earl, who sat speechless in amazement when he realised that Andrew Beck was actually a foreign spy. It was during the conversation that followed I learnt that the man who had been loved by Sonia was Cecil Bingham, the young country gentleman who, known to both, had sought to assist Ella in unearthing the identity of Dudley’s murderer. Sonia had misjudged my wife entirely, for she had never denounced her to Cecil, and the latter, being at that moment a guest in the Earl’s house, was sent for, and before us all the pair became reconciled.

Elizaveta Nicolayevna, or Ella, as I still call her, has now renounced her country, and become thoroughly English. A year ago Lord Warnham, assured of my wife’s probity—for greatly to Monsieur Grodekoff’s dismay, she had given some valuable information regarding the activity of the Russian Secret Service at Downing Street—appointed me to a responsible post at our Embassy in Paris, so that we now live together at the big white house in the Avenue des Champs Elysées, while Sonia and Cecil are also married and live quietly in a quaint old manor-house near Winchester.

It was only the other day, however, that we heard mention of Andrew Beck, the popular legislator who so mysteriously accepted stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds. There was a paragraph in the newspapers stating that he had been found drowned in the Scheldt, near Antwerp, and foul play was suspected. Then Ella explained to me that the woman who had passed as her mother, Mrs Laing, was, she afterwards discovered, a well-known Nihilist, and it was in order to keep observation upon her that the detective Renouf had entered her service. This woman, whose real name was Sophie Grunsberg, was greatly incensed against Beck on account of certain false accusations he had made against members of the revolutionary organisation, and there was little doubt that he had fallen beneath their far-reaching vengeance.

Here, as I pen these last few lines of my strange story of England’s peril, my own betrayal, and my wife’s fond love, Ella, with sweet, glad smile, moves forward to stroke my hair with soft, caressing hand. The odour of sampaguita pervades her chiffons, stirring within me memories of the past. We are together in the room I know so well, with its great windows overlooking the leafy Avenue. It is warm, the sun-shutters are closed, and from somewhere outside the gay air, “Si qu’on leur-z-y f’rait ça” is borne in upon the summer wind.

At last our days are full of passionate love and idyllic happiness. Verily there is great truth in those words of Holy Writ, “Whoso findeth a wife, findeth a good thing.”

The End.

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