Chapter Twenty Eight.

Chapter Twenty Eight.Her Imperial Highness.Until we rose and separated I succeeded in hiding my sorrow beneath a smile, but when at length I had shaken hands with my companions at the corner of the Rue de la Paix, and to my relief found myself once more alone walking across the Place Vendôme, with the black column standing out before me in the bright moonlight, my outburst of grief became uncontrollable. My heart, lancinated by the careless words of my companions, had been burdened by a bitterness rendered the more poignant because I had been compelled to laugh with them. Now that I had proof that Ella was not what she had represented herself to be—an affectionate, unassuming woman of my own station—I felt crushed, bewildered and disconsolate, for with the knowledge of our difference of birth the iron had entered my soul.The manner in which she had posed as daughter of the pleasant-faced widow of Robert Laing, and her calm, dignified bearing as my wife, had been a most perfect piece of acting. Never for one moment had I suspected her to be anything else than what she represented herself to be—plain Ella Laing, the only daughter of the deceased shipowner; yet she was actually a daughter of the Romanoffs, the most powerful and wealthy house in Europe. As I strolled slowly along the Rue Castiglione towards the hotel, I asked myself whether she had ever really loved me. At first I doubted her, because of the difference of our stations. Presently, however, when I recollected the perfect bliss of our honeymoon, when I remembered how childishly happy we had been together through those brief autumn days, in the sleepy old towns and villages of the Indre, content in each other’s joys, I could not longer declare within myself that hers had been mere theatrical emotion. Yes, she had loved me then, this high-born woman, over whose beauty half Paris raved, and I, in my ignorance, had fondly imagined our love would last always. The experiment of the masquerade had amused her at first, perhaps, but soon, alas! she had grown tired of life in a ten-roomed house in a quiet road in Kensington, and with a brief, cruel farewell had returned to her jewel-case the ring I had placed upon her slim finger, and left me with ruthless disregard for all the love I had bestowed upon her. Yet after all, was it really surprising that she, the daughter of an Imperial House, should become weary of the humdrum life she had been compelled to lead with one whose private income, outside his salary, was a paltry nine hundred a year?While we lived together, she had apparently exercised the greatest caution not to show herself possessed of money, for she always did her shopping in Kensington High Street, with due regard to economy, as became the wife of a man of limited means. Never once had she grumbled or sighed because she could not purchase higher-priced hats or dresses, but, always content, she had, I remembered, been proud to exhibit to me those odds-and-ends picked up in drapers’ shops, so dear to the feminine heart, and known as bargains. When I had regretted my small income, as I had done more than once, she had fondly kissed me, declaring herself perfectly willing to wait until I had obtained a diplomatic and more lucrative appointment. “You have an excellent friend in the Earl,” she would say, smiling sweetly. “He is certain to give you a post before long. Be patient.”I had been patient, and had lost her.Plunged in deep despair, I turned into the courtyard of the hotel, and sat down to think. As I did so a servant handed me a telegram. It was from Lord Warnham at Osborne, requesting my return on the morrow.The one thought that possessed me was that Ella—or the woman I had known and adored under that name—was in Paris. Could I leave without seeing her? She had deserted me, it was true, yet my passion was at that moment as intense even as it had been in those calm autumn days when we had wandered together along the peaceful lanes around old-world Chateauroux, hand-in-hand, in sweet contentment. In those never-to-be-forgotten hours we both possessed the delights of love and fever of happiness. To us everything was passion, ecstasy and delirium. We both felt as if we were living in a rose-coloured atmosphere; the heights of sentimentality glistened in our imaginations, and common everyday existence appeared to us to be far down below in the distance—in the shade between the gaps in these heights. I still felt the softness of that tiny hand I had so often pressed to my lips; I still felt the clasp of her arms about my neck; I still saw her deep blue eyes gazing into mine as we interchanged vows of eternal fidelity.The cry of a man selling theSoiraroused me. I rose suddenly. Yes, I must see her again. I must see her, if for the last time.Stepping into a cab, I directed the man to drive to her house, then, seating myself, glanced at my watch. It was already near midnight.Soon, with the clip-clap of the horse’s hoofs sounding upon the asphalte, we were crossing the Place de la Concorde, rendered bright by its myriad lights, then entering the broad avenue we passed the lines of illuminated cafés half-hidden by the trees surrounding them, and, driving on for some ten minutes, at last pulled up among a number of private carriages that were setting down guests before a great mansion, where I alighted.One of those brilliantfêtesthat were the talk of Paris was apparently about to commence, for many notabilities were arriving, and as I went forward to the spacious portico I was preceded by two pretty laughing girls attended by a tall and distinguished-looking man of military appearance. I drew back while they entered the great, brilliantly-lit hall with its fine marble staircase and profusion of exotics; then, when they had passed on, I inquired in French of the gigantic Russian concierge whether Her Highness was at home.“Yes, m’sieur,” answered the man, gruffly, scanning me closely, noticing that I was attired in a suit of dark tweed, for so suddenly had I left England that I had had no time to take with me a claw-hammer coat. “Her Highness is at home, m’sieur, but she is engaged,” he said, when he had thoroughly inspected me.I half drew my card-case from my pocket, but fearing lest she might not see me if she knew my name, I said,—“Go to her, and say that a friend craves one moment of her time upon an important matter.”“M’sieur gives no card?” he inquired, with a quick, interrogative look of suspicion.“No,” I answered.He led me across the hall wherein hung an elaborate Russian ikon, down one long well-carpeted corridor and then along another, at last ushering me into a great apartment resplendent with mirrors, statuary and gilt furniture, the latter bearing embroidered upon the crimson backs of the chairs her monogram, “EN”, surmounted by a Russian coronet. In the costly inlaid cabinets were arranged many pieces of priceless china, the carpet was of rich turquoise blue, the tables of ebony were inlaid with silver, and over all electric lamps, dotted here and there, shaded by coral silk, shed a warm, subdued light. Near the four long windows that occupied one end of the great room was a grand piano, upon which two photographs in ormolu frames stood conspicuously. I crossed to look at them and discovered that one was my own, that she had evidently taken with her when she had so suddenly left my house, and the other a portrait of the man who had betrayed me—Dudley Ogle.Slowly my eyes wandered around the elegant apartment, unable to realise that this handsome, luxurious abode could actually be my wife’s home. How mean and paltry indeed must our small drawing-room in Phillimore Gardens have appeared to her after all this stately magnificence and rigid etiquette. As I passed through the great mansion, one of the largest private residences in Paris, my nostrils had been greeted by the subtle odours of exotics, and upon my ears there had fallen the strains of an orchestra somewhere in the opposite wing of the building. Guests were evidently not shown to the side of the house where I had been conducted, for not a sound penetrated there. All was quiet, peaceful and stately.Suddenly, just as I bent to more closely examine Dudley’s portrait, and had distinguished that it was a copy similar to the one I had seen in Sonia’s possession, the door was thrown wide-open by a tall, liveried servant, who entered, and, bowing low, announced in stentorian tones,—“Her Imperial Highness Elizaveta Nicolayevna.”The rapid frou-frou of silk sounded outside, and next second my wife and I stood face to face.In an instant the colour left her cheeks. She staggered as if she had been dealt a blow, but managing to regain her self-possession, she turned quickly to the servant, and in a frigid tone said,—“Go, Anton. And see that I am not disturbed.”The man, glancing at me for a moment in unfeigned surprise, bowed, and withdrew in silence.I stood motionless, gazing upon her, noting the beauty of her costume, the brilliance of her diamonds, and the deathly pallor of her adorable face.“Geoffrey!” she gasped at last. In a half-fearful whisper she repeated my name, adding, “So you have found me!”With a quick, impetuous movement she walked unevenly towards me, with rustling skirts and outstretched hands. It seemed to me, as I looked at her, as if my soul flew towards her, spreading at first like a wave around the outline of her head, and then, attracted by the whiteness of her breast, descended into her.“Yes,” I said, slowly and gravely. “I have found you, Ella.”“Ah, no!” she cried, advancing so close to me that the well-remembered odour of sampaguita intoxicated me. I felt her warm, passionate breath upon my cheek. “Do not call me longer by that false name. Forget it—forget it all, and call me by my right name—Elizaveta.”“It is impossible,” I answered.“No, do not say that,” she cried hoarsely. “I—I know I have deceived you, Geoffrey. I lied to you. But forgive me. Tell me that you will some day forget.”“Think,” I said, in a low, reproachful tone, my heart filled with grief to overflowing—“think how you have wrecked my life,” I urged. “You masqueraded before me as a plain English girl; you married me and allowed me to adore you—ah! better than all the world besides—until you grew tired and left our poor, matter-of-fact home to reassume your true station—that of a Grand Duchess. You never loved me; but it amused you, I suppose, to become the wife of a man who was compelled to earn his livelihood. The economy you practised while with me was a new sensation to you, and your—”“Stop!” she cried vehemently, putting up her tiny hand to my mouth, as had been her habit long ago when she wished to arrest the flow of my words. “Stop! I cannot bear it! I tell you I did love you, Geoffrey. I love you now, dearer than life.”“Then why did you practise such base deception?” I demanded. “Why did you leave me and cast aside my wedding-ring?”“I—I was compelled,” she faltered.“Compelled!” I echoed, in a voice full of bitter sarcasm. “I do not—indeed I cannot blame you for regretting the false step you took when you consented to become my wife, yet why you should have done this is to me utterly incomprehensible.”“It will all be plain ere long,” she assured me, in a low, intense voice. “If I had not loved you, I should never have become your wife.”“But you were cruel to deceive me thus,” I retorted.“It is my misfortune, Geoffrey, that I was born a Grand Duchess,” she answered, looking straight at me with her deep blue eyes full of intense anxiety and sorrow. “It is not my fault. I swear I still love you with a love as honest and pure as ever a woman entertained towards a man.”“But after deceiving me in every particular regarding both the past and the present, you thought fit to leave me,” I went on ruthlessly.“Ah!” she exclaimed, as if reflecting, “I admit that I wronged you cruelly; yes, I admit it all, everything. Nevertheless, since we have parted, Geoffrey, I have recollected daily, with a thousand heartfelt regrets, the supreme joy of our married life. Ah! it was happiness, indeed, with you, the man I so dearly loved. But now,” and she shrugged her shoulders, half-hidden in their pale blue chiffon, the movement causing her diamonds to gleam with fiery iridescence. “Now, without your love, I have happiness no longer. All is despair.”“I have not forgotten. Every detail of our brief, joyous life together is still fresh in my memory,” I declared sorrowfully.“Forgotten! How can either of us forget?” she cried impetuously, pushing back from her white brow her gold-brown hair, with its scintillating star. “Only in those few months spent by your side, Geoffrey, have I known what it is to really live and to love. Although I have been absent from you I have, nevertheless, known from time to time how you have fared, yet I dared not give you any sign as to my whereabouts, fearing that you would brand me as base and heartless. To you I must appear so, I know; yet, although we are separated, I am still your wife and you my husband. I still love you. Forgive me.”And she stood before me with bent head in penitent attitude, her slight frame shaken by tremulous emotion.A lump rose in my throat. I felt choked by the intoxication of her love, for I idolised her. Yet I knew that, although my wife, she could never be the same to me as in those blissful days in Kensington before the shadow of suspicion fell between us.“You are silent, Geoffrey,” she whispered hoarsely at last, starting at the sound of her own voice. Then, throwing her soft arms about my neck, she clung to me passionately, as she was wont to do in those bygone days of happiness, saying, “You cannot deny that you still care for me—that I am yours. Yet you are thinking of the past; of what you regard as my base faithlessness! My actions were, I admit, full of apparent ingratitude. Yes, I cast your great love beneath my feet and trampled it in the mire, not because I am what I am, I swear, but because such action was imperative—because I was striving for my emancipation.”“Your emancipation?” I exclaimed, with a touch of anger. “From your marriage vows, it seems.”“Ah, no!” cried the Grand Duchess, throwing back her white neck, which rose with her hot, panting breath. “No, no, not that! I struggled to free myself from a tie so hateful that I believe I should have killed myself were it not that I loved you so fondly, and hoped that some day happiness would again be ours. But, alas! I strove in vain; for, when within an ace of success, you became filled with suspicion and accused me of unfaithfulness, while it became imperative, almost at the same moment, that I should return to the position I had sought to relinquish. Since I fled from you I have lived on from day to day full of bitter regrets and in constant fear lest you should discover that I was not what I represented myself to be, and come here to demand an explanation. Well, at last you have come, and—and all I can now do is to assure you that I acted in our mutual interests, and to implore your forgiveness.”I still gazed at her without replying.“Forgive me, Geoffrey,” she repeated. “One cannot get accustomed to the loss of happiness, and I cannot live without you; indeed, I cannot. Say that we may begin again, that, even though we must for the present be parted, we may still love and live for each other. See! I am laughing and am happy,” she cried hysterically. “Speak! Do speak to me?”Tears were trembling in her deep, wonderful eyes like dewdrops in the calix of a blue flower, and without knowing what I did, I stroked her silky hair. Slowly she bent her head, and at last I softly kissed her eyelids.“Yes,” I said huskily, “I love you, Ella—for I can call you by no other name, and cannot think of you other than as the woman I believed you to be. I can see that although we are man and wife in the eyes of the law, that you were right to end the folly, even though you were unable to do it without some pangs of conscience. You are my wife, it is true, but our lives lie apart, for your position precludes you from acknowledging me to the world as your husband. You—”“Yes, I will. I will, Geoffrey! Soon I shall be freed from this terrible yoke that crushes me beneath its burden,” she exclaimed eagerly. “Be patient, and ere long we may again live together and enjoy our happiness to the full. You still doubt that I really love you. You believe that my marriage was a mere freak, of which I afterwards repented, and then strove to hide my identity. What can I do?” she cried, dismayed. “What can I do to give you proof that I love no other man?”“One very small action,” I answered gravely, still holding her slight, trembling form in my arms.“What is it?” she inquired quickly, glancing up into my face. “I am ready to do it, whatever it is.”For a moment I paused in hesitation.“Answer me a single question, Ella,” I said. “Remember you are my wife, and should have no secrets from me. Tell me, truthfully and honestly, how there came into your possession the secret document that was stolen from me on the day of Dudley’s death.”The colour left her face, her lips moved, and a slight shiver ran over her shoulders as she gazed at me. Never before had her eyes seemed so large, nor had there been such depths in them. Some subtle influence seemed in an instant to have transfigured her whole being.

Until we rose and separated I succeeded in hiding my sorrow beneath a smile, but when at length I had shaken hands with my companions at the corner of the Rue de la Paix, and to my relief found myself once more alone walking across the Place Vendôme, with the black column standing out before me in the bright moonlight, my outburst of grief became uncontrollable. My heart, lancinated by the careless words of my companions, had been burdened by a bitterness rendered the more poignant because I had been compelled to laugh with them. Now that I had proof that Ella was not what she had represented herself to be—an affectionate, unassuming woman of my own station—I felt crushed, bewildered and disconsolate, for with the knowledge of our difference of birth the iron had entered my soul.

The manner in which she had posed as daughter of the pleasant-faced widow of Robert Laing, and her calm, dignified bearing as my wife, had been a most perfect piece of acting. Never for one moment had I suspected her to be anything else than what she represented herself to be—plain Ella Laing, the only daughter of the deceased shipowner; yet she was actually a daughter of the Romanoffs, the most powerful and wealthy house in Europe. As I strolled slowly along the Rue Castiglione towards the hotel, I asked myself whether she had ever really loved me. At first I doubted her, because of the difference of our stations. Presently, however, when I recollected the perfect bliss of our honeymoon, when I remembered how childishly happy we had been together through those brief autumn days, in the sleepy old towns and villages of the Indre, content in each other’s joys, I could not longer declare within myself that hers had been mere theatrical emotion. Yes, she had loved me then, this high-born woman, over whose beauty half Paris raved, and I, in my ignorance, had fondly imagined our love would last always. The experiment of the masquerade had amused her at first, perhaps, but soon, alas! she had grown tired of life in a ten-roomed house in a quiet road in Kensington, and with a brief, cruel farewell had returned to her jewel-case the ring I had placed upon her slim finger, and left me with ruthless disregard for all the love I had bestowed upon her. Yet after all, was it really surprising that she, the daughter of an Imperial House, should become weary of the humdrum life she had been compelled to lead with one whose private income, outside his salary, was a paltry nine hundred a year?

While we lived together, she had apparently exercised the greatest caution not to show herself possessed of money, for she always did her shopping in Kensington High Street, with due regard to economy, as became the wife of a man of limited means. Never once had she grumbled or sighed because she could not purchase higher-priced hats or dresses, but, always content, she had, I remembered, been proud to exhibit to me those odds-and-ends picked up in drapers’ shops, so dear to the feminine heart, and known as bargains. When I had regretted my small income, as I had done more than once, she had fondly kissed me, declaring herself perfectly willing to wait until I had obtained a diplomatic and more lucrative appointment. “You have an excellent friend in the Earl,” she would say, smiling sweetly. “He is certain to give you a post before long. Be patient.”

I had been patient, and had lost her.

Plunged in deep despair, I turned into the courtyard of the hotel, and sat down to think. As I did so a servant handed me a telegram. It was from Lord Warnham at Osborne, requesting my return on the morrow.

The one thought that possessed me was that Ella—or the woman I had known and adored under that name—was in Paris. Could I leave without seeing her? She had deserted me, it was true, yet my passion was at that moment as intense even as it had been in those calm autumn days when we had wandered together along the peaceful lanes around old-world Chateauroux, hand-in-hand, in sweet contentment. In those never-to-be-forgotten hours we both possessed the delights of love and fever of happiness. To us everything was passion, ecstasy and delirium. We both felt as if we were living in a rose-coloured atmosphere; the heights of sentimentality glistened in our imaginations, and common everyday existence appeared to us to be far down below in the distance—in the shade between the gaps in these heights. I still felt the softness of that tiny hand I had so often pressed to my lips; I still felt the clasp of her arms about my neck; I still saw her deep blue eyes gazing into mine as we interchanged vows of eternal fidelity.

The cry of a man selling theSoiraroused me. I rose suddenly. Yes, I must see her again. I must see her, if for the last time.

Stepping into a cab, I directed the man to drive to her house, then, seating myself, glanced at my watch. It was already near midnight.

Soon, with the clip-clap of the horse’s hoofs sounding upon the asphalte, we were crossing the Place de la Concorde, rendered bright by its myriad lights, then entering the broad avenue we passed the lines of illuminated cafés half-hidden by the trees surrounding them, and, driving on for some ten minutes, at last pulled up among a number of private carriages that were setting down guests before a great mansion, where I alighted.

One of those brilliantfêtesthat were the talk of Paris was apparently about to commence, for many notabilities were arriving, and as I went forward to the spacious portico I was preceded by two pretty laughing girls attended by a tall and distinguished-looking man of military appearance. I drew back while they entered the great, brilliantly-lit hall with its fine marble staircase and profusion of exotics; then, when they had passed on, I inquired in French of the gigantic Russian concierge whether Her Highness was at home.

“Yes, m’sieur,” answered the man, gruffly, scanning me closely, noticing that I was attired in a suit of dark tweed, for so suddenly had I left England that I had had no time to take with me a claw-hammer coat. “Her Highness is at home, m’sieur, but she is engaged,” he said, when he had thoroughly inspected me.

I half drew my card-case from my pocket, but fearing lest she might not see me if she knew my name, I said,—

“Go to her, and say that a friend craves one moment of her time upon an important matter.”

“M’sieur gives no card?” he inquired, with a quick, interrogative look of suspicion.

“No,” I answered.

He led me across the hall wherein hung an elaborate Russian ikon, down one long well-carpeted corridor and then along another, at last ushering me into a great apartment resplendent with mirrors, statuary and gilt furniture, the latter bearing embroidered upon the crimson backs of the chairs her monogram, “EN”, surmounted by a Russian coronet. In the costly inlaid cabinets were arranged many pieces of priceless china, the carpet was of rich turquoise blue, the tables of ebony were inlaid with silver, and over all electric lamps, dotted here and there, shaded by coral silk, shed a warm, subdued light. Near the four long windows that occupied one end of the great room was a grand piano, upon which two photographs in ormolu frames stood conspicuously. I crossed to look at them and discovered that one was my own, that she had evidently taken with her when she had so suddenly left my house, and the other a portrait of the man who had betrayed me—Dudley Ogle.

Slowly my eyes wandered around the elegant apartment, unable to realise that this handsome, luxurious abode could actually be my wife’s home. How mean and paltry indeed must our small drawing-room in Phillimore Gardens have appeared to her after all this stately magnificence and rigid etiquette. As I passed through the great mansion, one of the largest private residences in Paris, my nostrils had been greeted by the subtle odours of exotics, and upon my ears there had fallen the strains of an orchestra somewhere in the opposite wing of the building. Guests were evidently not shown to the side of the house where I had been conducted, for not a sound penetrated there. All was quiet, peaceful and stately.

Suddenly, just as I bent to more closely examine Dudley’s portrait, and had distinguished that it was a copy similar to the one I had seen in Sonia’s possession, the door was thrown wide-open by a tall, liveried servant, who entered, and, bowing low, announced in stentorian tones,—“Her Imperial Highness Elizaveta Nicolayevna.”

The rapid frou-frou of silk sounded outside, and next second my wife and I stood face to face.

In an instant the colour left her cheeks. She staggered as if she had been dealt a blow, but managing to regain her self-possession, she turned quickly to the servant, and in a frigid tone said,—

“Go, Anton. And see that I am not disturbed.”

The man, glancing at me for a moment in unfeigned surprise, bowed, and withdrew in silence.

I stood motionless, gazing upon her, noting the beauty of her costume, the brilliance of her diamonds, and the deathly pallor of her adorable face.

“Geoffrey!” she gasped at last. In a half-fearful whisper she repeated my name, adding, “So you have found me!”

With a quick, impetuous movement she walked unevenly towards me, with rustling skirts and outstretched hands. It seemed to me, as I looked at her, as if my soul flew towards her, spreading at first like a wave around the outline of her head, and then, attracted by the whiteness of her breast, descended into her.

“Yes,” I said, slowly and gravely. “I have found you, Ella.”

“Ah, no!” she cried, advancing so close to me that the well-remembered odour of sampaguita intoxicated me. I felt her warm, passionate breath upon my cheek. “Do not call me longer by that false name. Forget it—forget it all, and call me by my right name—Elizaveta.”

“It is impossible,” I answered.

“No, do not say that,” she cried hoarsely. “I—I know I have deceived you, Geoffrey. I lied to you. But forgive me. Tell me that you will some day forget.”

“Think,” I said, in a low, reproachful tone, my heart filled with grief to overflowing—“think how you have wrecked my life,” I urged. “You masqueraded before me as a plain English girl; you married me and allowed me to adore you—ah! better than all the world besides—until you grew tired and left our poor, matter-of-fact home to reassume your true station—that of a Grand Duchess. You never loved me; but it amused you, I suppose, to become the wife of a man who was compelled to earn his livelihood. The economy you practised while with me was a new sensation to you, and your—”

“Stop!” she cried vehemently, putting up her tiny hand to my mouth, as had been her habit long ago when she wished to arrest the flow of my words. “Stop! I cannot bear it! I tell you I did love you, Geoffrey. I love you now, dearer than life.”

“Then why did you practise such base deception?” I demanded. “Why did you leave me and cast aside my wedding-ring?”

“I—I was compelled,” she faltered.

“Compelled!” I echoed, in a voice full of bitter sarcasm. “I do not—indeed I cannot blame you for regretting the false step you took when you consented to become my wife, yet why you should have done this is to me utterly incomprehensible.”

“It will all be plain ere long,” she assured me, in a low, intense voice. “If I had not loved you, I should never have become your wife.”

“But you were cruel to deceive me thus,” I retorted.

“It is my misfortune, Geoffrey, that I was born a Grand Duchess,” she answered, looking straight at me with her deep blue eyes full of intense anxiety and sorrow. “It is not my fault. I swear I still love you with a love as honest and pure as ever a woman entertained towards a man.”

“But after deceiving me in every particular regarding both the past and the present, you thought fit to leave me,” I went on ruthlessly.

“Ah!” she exclaimed, as if reflecting, “I admit that I wronged you cruelly; yes, I admit it all, everything. Nevertheless, since we have parted, Geoffrey, I have recollected daily, with a thousand heartfelt regrets, the supreme joy of our married life. Ah! it was happiness, indeed, with you, the man I so dearly loved. But now,” and she shrugged her shoulders, half-hidden in their pale blue chiffon, the movement causing her diamonds to gleam with fiery iridescence. “Now, without your love, I have happiness no longer. All is despair.”

“I have not forgotten. Every detail of our brief, joyous life together is still fresh in my memory,” I declared sorrowfully.

“Forgotten! How can either of us forget?” she cried impetuously, pushing back from her white brow her gold-brown hair, with its scintillating star. “Only in those few months spent by your side, Geoffrey, have I known what it is to really live and to love. Although I have been absent from you I have, nevertheless, known from time to time how you have fared, yet I dared not give you any sign as to my whereabouts, fearing that you would brand me as base and heartless. To you I must appear so, I know; yet, although we are separated, I am still your wife and you my husband. I still love you. Forgive me.”

And she stood before me with bent head in penitent attitude, her slight frame shaken by tremulous emotion.

A lump rose in my throat. I felt choked by the intoxication of her love, for I idolised her. Yet I knew that, although my wife, she could never be the same to me as in those blissful days in Kensington before the shadow of suspicion fell between us.

“You are silent, Geoffrey,” she whispered hoarsely at last, starting at the sound of her own voice. Then, throwing her soft arms about my neck, she clung to me passionately, as she was wont to do in those bygone days of happiness, saying, “You cannot deny that you still care for me—that I am yours. Yet you are thinking of the past; of what you regard as my base faithlessness! My actions were, I admit, full of apparent ingratitude. Yes, I cast your great love beneath my feet and trampled it in the mire, not because I am what I am, I swear, but because such action was imperative—because I was striving for my emancipation.”

“Your emancipation?” I exclaimed, with a touch of anger. “From your marriage vows, it seems.”

“Ah, no!” cried the Grand Duchess, throwing back her white neck, which rose with her hot, panting breath. “No, no, not that! I struggled to free myself from a tie so hateful that I believe I should have killed myself were it not that I loved you so fondly, and hoped that some day happiness would again be ours. But, alas! I strove in vain; for, when within an ace of success, you became filled with suspicion and accused me of unfaithfulness, while it became imperative, almost at the same moment, that I should return to the position I had sought to relinquish. Since I fled from you I have lived on from day to day full of bitter regrets and in constant fear lest you should discover that I was not what I represented myself to be, and come here to demand an explanation. Well, at last you have come, and—and all I can now do is to assure you that I acted in our mutual interests, and to implore your forgiveness.”

I still gazed at her without replying.

“Forgive me, Geoffrey,” she repeated. “One cannot get accustomed to the loss of happiness, and I cannot live without you; indeed, I cannot. Say that we may begin again, that, even though we must for the present be parted, we may still love and live for each other. See! I am laughing and am happy,” she cried hysterically. “Speak! Do speak to me?”

Tears were trembling in her deep, wonderful eyes like dewdrops in the calix of a blue flower, and without knowing what I did, I stroked her silky hair. Slowly she bent her head, and at last I softly kissed her eyelids.

“Yes,” I said huskily, “I love you, Ella—for I can call you by no other name, and cannot think of you other than as the woman I believed you to be. I can see that although we are man and wife in the eyes of the law, that you were right to end the folly, even though you were unable to do it without some pangs of conscience. You are my wife, it is true, but our lives lie apart, for your position precludes you from acknowledging me to the world as your husband. You—”

“Yes, I will. I will, Geoffrey! Soon I shall be freed from this terrible yoke that crushes me beneath its burden,” she exclaimed eagerly. “Be patient, and ere long we may again live together and enjoy our happiness to the full. You still doubt that I really love you. You believe that my marriage was a mere freak, of which I afterwards repented, and then strove to hide my identity. What can I do?” she cried, dismayed. “What can I do to give you proof that I love no other man?”

“One very small action,” I answered gravely, still holding her slight, trembling form in my arms.

“What is it?” she inquired quickly, glancing up into my face. “I am ready to do it, whatever it is.”

For a moment I paused in hesitation.

“Answer me a single question, Ella,” I said. “Remember you are my wife, and should have no secrets from me. Tell me, truthfully and honestly, how there came into your possession the secret document that was stolen from me on the day of Dudley’s death.”

The colour left her face, her lips moved, and a slight shiver ran over her shoulders as she gazed at me. Never before had her eyes seemed so large, nor had there been such depths in them. Some subtle influence seemed in an instant to have transfigured her whole being.

Chapter Twenty Nine.The Seal of Silence.“No, you must not ask me, for I cannot tell you,” she faltered, after I had gravely repeated my earnest inquiry. She shrank from my embrace, and as she stood before me, her handsome head was bent in an attitude of utter dejection.“Ah, the same lame story?” I cried impatiently. “You refuse.”She raised her sad eyes. I saw in their clear depths a yearning for pity.“I dare not tell you yet, Geoffrey,” she whispered, in a strained, terrified voice.“You know well how much keen anxiety the loss of that document caused me,” I said. “Why did you not tell me that it was in your keeping?”“It was not in my keeping,” she protested. “I recovered it only a few days before we parted.”“But you knew something of its whereabouts?” I argued.“I was not certain,” she vaguely replied, her slim fingers picking at the bands of pearl passementerie across the flimsy chiffon of her bodice.With an expression of disbelief I turned from her.“Ah, Geoffrey,” she cried wildly, “I am fully conscious of what your thoughts must be. Now that you have discovered my true position, that I am a Russian, you believe I had a hand in the theft of the Anglo-German Convention; that by my machinations its text was transmitted to St Petersburg—eh?”No answer passed my lips, but I think I bowed my head in confirmation of her fevered words.“Well, it is untrue, as you will learn some day. It is untrue, I swear,” she exclaimed with terrible earnestness. “Instead of endeavouring to bring suspicion and opprobrium upon you, and disaster upon the nations of Europe, I have striven both night and day to clear away the ill effect produced by the dastard revelations made to our Ministry in St Petersburg. Remember that the single spark required to fire the mine and convulse the world from Calais to Pekin was not applied; the Tzar refrained from declaring war. Some day you, and through you, the British Government, will know the reason a recourse to arms was averted. When you are made aware of the truth, then no longer will you misjudge me.”She spoke with a fervency that was entirely unfeigned; her bright eyes met mine with unwavering glance, and with a quick movement she had placed one hand upon her breast as if to allay the palpitation there. Her heart was full; upon her fair face was an expression of mingled anxiety and dread, and her bejewelled hands trembled.“I am your husband,” I said calmly. “If I promise you not to divulge—surely I may know your secret whatever it may be.”“No,” she answered, speaking almost mechanically, “I dare not tell you anything at present. It would be fatal to all my plans—fatal to me, and to you.”“You speak so strangely,” I observed, with some warmth. “Mystery seems one of your idiosyncrasies.”“Ah,” she sighed, advancing a step towards me, her head sunk upon her breast, “it is imperative. You cannot know how I have suffered, Geoffrey, ever since we met. Long ago at ‘The Nook,’ fearing that I should bring you unhappiness, I strove to tear myself from you and return here to this life, but was unable. I loved you, and hated all the strict etiquette and theatrical display with which I am bound to surround myself, merely because I chance to be born of an Imperial family. I married you, and, content in the knowledge that you loved me devotedly, I was prepared to renounce my name and live quietly with you always. But, alas! we of the Romanoffs are ruled by the head of our House, and our actions are ofttimes in obedience to the will of the Emperor. I was compelled to depart without revealing to you the secret of my birth.”“But why did you masquerade in that manner?” I inquired.“At first I did so in order to avoid all the trammels of Court life in St Petersburg, the eternal gaiety of la Ville Lumière, and to be free to do what I liked and go where I chose,” she answered. “Soon, however, my life as Ella Laing became a stern reality, for I met and loved you.”“Then you regretted?”“I regretted only because I feared that I cared for you too much—that one day we should be compelled to part.”“You knew that it was impossible for you to renounce both title and position,” I hazarded, looking at her gravely.“I feared that my family would not allow me to do so,” she answered frankly. “Yet you proposed marriage; we became man and wife, and the first weeks of our new life were full of joy and happiness. Soon, however, the Nemesis that I dreaded fell upon me, crushing all desire for life from my heart. I was compelled to fly and leave you in ignorance.”“And you forgot that in your escritoire there remained the stolen agreement?” I said slowly, looking straight into her pale face.“Yes, I admit it,” she replied, in a voice almost inaudible, her dry lips moving convulsively. “So full was my mind of thoughts of you that I did not remember it until too late to return and secure it.”“The woman who passed as Mrs Laing was not, of course, your mother?”“She was no relation whatever. I paid her to pose as my maternal relative and keep house for me.”“Where is she now?”“I have no idea,” my wife answered. “She was a curious woman, and, strangely enough, she left London suddenly, on the very morning of the day of my departure.”“And what of Beck?” I asked. “Did he know who you really were?”“Scarcely,” she exclaimed. “Do you think he could have kept to himself the knowledge that I was a relative of the Tzar. Why, such a man would have related the fact that he knew me, and dined at our house, to every member of his club within twenty-four hours. You know, as well as I do, how he simply adores anybody with a title. It is the same with all the newly-wealthy crowd who are struggling to get into society.”It was upon my tongue to explain to her the truth regarding the man-servant who passed as Helmholtz; nevertheless, I hesitated to do so at present because of my promise to Paul Verblioudovitch. The silence between us was protracted. She had covered her tear-stained face with her hands, and was sobbing.Nevertheless, I was not moved with pity. Her determination to preserve her secret filled me with annoyance. I had expected her to make confession, but I plainly saw she had no intention of revealing the truth.“Why did you associate with a woman of such doubtful reputation as Sonia Korolénko?” I asked abruptly at last.“Because I wished to ascertain something,” she replied, in a harsh voice.“She is scarcely your friend,” I observed.“She is,” she declared. “I have known her for several years.”“And you were actually aware of her true character while associating with her!” I exclaimed, rather surprised.“Of course,” she sighed. “She is an adventuress, I know; nevertheless, she has proved my friend on many occasions.”“That’s curious,” I remarked.“Why?”“Because she made certain allegations against you,” I answered.“Yes,” she said, without betraying either anger or surprise. “I am fully aware of that. Strange though it may appear, her statements were made with a definite object.”“Why did she utter such unfounded calumnies?”“Because I wished to see whether you really loved me,” she answered, drawing herself up and regarding me with sudden calmness. At that moment she assumed the air of the Grand Duchess.“I did love you,” I declared, “and I took no heed of her assertions. I notice, however,” I added, turning and pointing towards the piano, “I notice that you have placed in a position of conspicuousness the portrait of the man she declared was your lover. Side by side you have placed the pictures of betrayer and betrayed.”She held her breath, gazing across to the spot I had indicated. Then, in a voice full of emotion, she said,—“You were foully betrayed, Geoffrey, it is true, but the evil that was done has now been eradicated.”“In other words, Ogle has paid the death penalty, eh?” I observed, with a grim expression of satisfaction.“No, no, not that,” she protested seriously. “I mean that the strained relations between your country and mine have now been readjusted, and that a feeling more amicable than before prevails. Even the Earl of Warnham must admit the plain truth that no Power joins another in war unless it sees its own interest in so doing. Russia now, as before the effusion of hearts here in Paris, will attend to her own business, and will not send her Black Sea and Baltic Fleets flying out unless her interests bring her into collision with your British Government—and then it may happen it will not be the interest of France to fight. In the latter days of Louis Philippe there was talk of a Franco-Russian alliance, and there were people who knew—they did not think they knew on the best authority—that the two would be one next spring. Yet Louis Philippe went over to your England an exile by the useful name of Smith, and before long France and England were allied in war against my country. No, good counsel has prevailed, and by the very revelation of the secret alliance contracted between England and Germany, European peace has been secured.”“You talk like a diplomatist,” I observed reflectively.She shrugged her shoulders, and with a forced laugh said,—“It is but natural that I should take an interest in the affairs of nations, I suppose.”“Let us put them aside,” I said. “We are not rival diplomatists, but husband and wife; we—”“Yes, yes,” she cried, interrupting. “I am happy because you are here with me; you, whose presence I have been fearing for so long. See! I smile and am happy;” and she gave vent to a hollow, discordant laugh.“Happy because you have so successfully mystified me,” I sighed.“No. Happy because I love you, Geoffrey,” she exclaimed, again throwing her arms affectionately about my neck, and raising her full red lips to mine. “Forgive me; do say you will forgive me,” she implored.“How can I ever forget the ingenuity and deep cunning with which you deceived me,” I said. “I cannot but recollect how, on that night at Chesham House, Grodekoff congratulated you upon your marriage, yet how careful he was not to disclose to me your identity. Again, even my friend Verblioudovitch must have known who you really were. Why did he not tell me?”“Because the staff of the Embassy had already received strict orders from St Petersburg not to acknowledge me,” she exclaimed, with a smile. “Lord Warnham fancied he recognised me, and spoke to the Ambassador; but the latter succeeded in assuring him that before marriage I was Ella Laing, and that the Grand Duchess Elizaveta Nicolayevna was at that moment with the Tzarina at Tzarskoïe-Selo. He believed it, and afterwards M’sieur Grodekoff assured me that was the first occasion he had been enabled to successfully deceive your lynx-eyed Foreign Minister.”“You feared that the Earl might recognise you,” I exclaimed, surprised, for I now remembered the effect produced on my chief when his eyes had first fallen upon my wife. “You knew him, then?”“Ah, no,” she faltered; “well, we were not exactly acquainted,” and she appeared rather confused, I thought, for her cheeks were suffused by the faintest suspicion of a blush.“Did you expect he would be there?”“No; you told me distinctly that he was not going, otherwise I should never have accompanied you,” she said frankly.“Why?”“Because I did not desire to meet him,” she replied, adding, with a laugh, “As it was, however, he was satisfied, and went away marvelling, no doubt, at the striking resemblance.”“Yet you told me nothing,” I observed reproachfully.“No; I was afraid,” she replied, in a serious voice. “With you I lived on from day to day, fearing detection, dreading lest you should discover some facts regarding my past, and by their light believe me to be an adventuress. Yet, at the same time, I worked on to achieve my freedom from a yoke which had become so galling that, now I loved you, I could endure it no longer.”“And did you not succeed in breaking asunder this mysterious bond?” I inquired, half doubtfully.“No,” she answered, shaking her head sorrowfully. “By an untoward circumstance, against which I had not provided, I was prevented, and compelled to flee.”“If you will divulge absolutely nothing regarding the manner in which you became possessed of the stolen convention, or the reason you have masqueraded as my wife, you can at least tell me why you received so many communications regarding clandestine meetings, and explain who was your mysterious correspondent who signed himself ‘X.’”Her heart beat quickly; she sighed, and lowered her gaze. She strove to preserve a demeanour of calm hauteur as befitted her station, but in vain.“You have also found those letters,” she remarked, her voice trembling.“Yes. Tell me the truth and put my mind at ease.”“I can put your mind entirely at ease by assuring you, as I did after you detected me walking in Kensington Gardens, that I have had no lover besides yourself, Geoffrey,” she cried vehemently. “I have told you already that I worked to secure freedom of action in the future. Those letters were from one who rendered me considerable assistance.”“What was his name?” I demanded quickly.“I may not tell you that,” was her answer, uttered in a quiet, firm tone.“Then, speaking plainly, you refuse, even now, to give me any elucidation whatever of this irritating mystery, or to allow me to obtain any corroboration of your remarkable story,” I said, with a sudden coldness.She noticed my change of manner, and clung to me with uplifted face, pale and agitated. Her attempt to treat me as other than her husband had utterly failed.“Ah! do not speak so cruelly,” she exclaimed, panting. “I—I really cannot bear it, Geoffrey—indeed I can’t. You must have seen that I loved you. I was, when I married, prepared to sacrifice all for your sake; nay, I did sacrifice everything until—until I was forced from you, and thrust back here to this place, that to me is little else than a gilded prison. Ah?” she cried, sobbing bitterly, and gazing around her in despair, “you cannot know how deeply I have sorrowed, how poignant has been the grief in the secret and inmost recesses of my heart; or how, through these months, while I have been travelling, I have longed to see you once again, and hear your voice telling me of your love. But, alas! without knowledge of the strange secret that seals my lips, you can know nothing—nothing!”“I only know that I still adore you,” I said, with heartfelt fervency.“Ah! I knew you did,” she exclaimed, raising her eager lips to mine in ecstasy. “I knew you would pity me when you came, yet I feared—I feared because I had lied to you, and deceived you so completely.” Then she kissed my lips, but I did not return her hot, passionate caress, although I confess it made my head reel.“You have not forgiven,” she exclaimed, in a voice quivering with emotion, as she drew back. “You have not yet promised that you will still regard me as your wife.”I hesitated. The startling fact of her true station, and the revelation of how ingeniously I had been tricked, caused me a slight revulsion of feeling. Somehow, as Grand Duchess she seemed an entirely different being to the plain, unassuming woman I had known as Ella. From the crown of her well-dressed hair to the point of her tiny, white kid shoe with its pearl embroidery, she was a patrician; the magnificence of her dress and jewels dazzled me, yet in her declarations of devotion her voice seemed to be marred by some indefinable but spurious ring.Even now she was deceiving me. She would allow no word of her mysterious secret to pass her lips. It had always been the same. She would tell me absolutely nothing, vaguely asserting that to utter the truth would be to invoke an avenging power that she dreaded. I remembered how she had seemed terrorised on more than one occasion when I had demanded the truth, yet what I had learned that night increased my suspicions.“If I forgive and seek no explanation of the past,” I said at last, “we must, I suppose, remain parted.”“Ah, yes!” she gasped. “But only for a few short weeks. Then we will come together again never to part—never.”“I can forgive on one condition only,” I said—“that you tell me the truth regarding the dastardly theft from me on the day of Dudley’s death.”For an instant she was silent. Then, burying her face on my shoulder, sobbing, she answered in a tone so low as to be almost inaudible,—“I cannot!”Gently but firmly I put her from me, although she clung about my neck, urging me to pity her.“I cannot pity you if you refuse to repose confidence in me,” I answered.“I do not refuse,” she cried. “It is because my secret is of such a nature that, if divulged, it would wreck both your own happiness and mine.”“Then to argue further is absolutely useless,” I answered coldly. “We must part.”“You intend to leave me without forgiveness,” she wailed. “Ah, you will not be so cruel, Geoffrey. Surely you can see how passionately I love you.”“You do not, however, love me sufficiently well to risk all consequences of divulging your mysterious secret,” I retorted, with almost brutal indifference, turning slowly from her.“Then kiss me, Geoffrey,” she cried wildly, springing towards me and again entwining her soft arms about my neck. “Kiss me once again—if for the last time.”Our lips met for an instant, then slowly I disengaged myself and strode towards the door. In her refusal to throw light upon the incidents that had so long held me perplexed and bewildered, I fancied she was shielding someone. Although crushed and downcast, I had resolved to go forth into the world again with my terrible burden of sorrow concealed beneath a smiling countenance. I regretted deeply that I had sought her, now that I was aware of the gulf that lay between us.“Stay, Geoffrey! Stay. I cannot bear that you should go,” she wailed.Halting, I turned towards her, saying,—“When I have learnt the truth, then only will I return. Till then, I can have no faith in you.”“But you are my husband, Geoffrey. I love you.”She tottered forward unevenly, as if to follow me, but ere I could save her she staggered and fell forward upon the carpet in a dead faint.I rang the bell violently, then, with a final glance at the blanched features of the woman I so dearly loved, I passed out, struggling through the brilliant, laughing throng of guests in the great hall, and was soon alone in utter dejection beneath the trees in the long, gas-lit avenue.

“No, you must not ask me, for I cannot tell you,” she faltered, after I had gravely repeated my earnest inquiry. She shrank from my embrace, and as she stood before me, her handsome head was bent in an attitude of utter dejection.

“Ah, the same lame story?” I cried impatiently. “You refuse.”

She raised her sad eyes. I saw in their clear depths a yearning for pity.

“I dare not tell you yet, Geoffrey,” she whispered, in a strained, terrified voice.

“You know well how much keen anxiety the loss of that document caused me,” I said. “Why did you not tell me that it was in your keeping?”

“It was not in my keeping,” she protested. “I recovered it only a few days before we parted.”

“But you knew something of its whereabouts?” I argued.

“I was not certain,” she vaguely replied, her slim fingers picking at the bands of pearl passementerie across the flimsy chiffon of her bodice.

With an expression of disbelief I turned from her.

“Ah, Geoffrey,” she cried wildly, “I am fully conscious of what your thoughts must be. Now that you have discovered my true position, that I am a Russian, you believe I had a hand in the theft of the Anglo-German Convention; that by my machinations its text was transmitted to St Petersburg—eh?”

No answer passed my lips, but I think I bowed my head in confirmation of her fevered words.

“Well, it is untrue, as you will learn some day. It is untrue, I swear,” she exclaimed with terrible earnestness. “Instead of endeavouring to bring suspicion and opprobrium upon you, and disaster upon the nations of Europe, I have striven both night and day to clear away the ill effect produced by the dastard revelations made to our Ministry in St Petersburg. Remember that the single spark required to fire the mine and convulse the world from Calais to Pekin was not applied; the Tzar refrained from declaring war. Some day you, and through you, the British Government, will know the reason a recourse to arms was averted. When you are made aware of the truth, then no longer will you misjudge me.”

She spoke with a fervency that was entirely unfeigned; her bright eyes met mine with unwavering glance, and with a quick movement she had placed one hand upon her breast as if to allay the palpitation there. Her heart was full; upon her fair face was an expression of mingled anxiety and dread, and her bejewelled hands trembled.

“I am your husband,” I said calmly. “If I promise you not to divulge—surely I may know your secret whatever it may be.”

“No,” she answered, speaking almost mechanically, “I dare not tell you anything at present. It would be fatal to all my plans—fatal to me, and to you.”

“You speak so strangely,” I observed, with some warmth. “Mystery seems one of your idiosyncrasies.”

“Ah,” she sighed, advancing a step towards me, her head sunk upon her breast, “it is imperative. You cannot know how I have suffered, Geoffrey, ever since we met. Long ago at ‘The Nook,’ fearing that I should bring you unhappiness, I strove to tear myself from you and return here to this life, but was unable. I loved you, and hated all the strict etiquette and theatrical display with which I am bound to surround myself, merely because I chance to be born of an Imperial family. I married you, and, content in the knowledge that you loved me devotedly, I was prepared to renounce my name and live quietly with you always. But, alas! we of the Romanoffs are ruled by the head of our House, and our actions are ofttimes in obedience to the will of the Emperor. I was compelled to depart without revealing to you the secret of my birth.”

“But why did you masquerade in that manner?” I inquired.

“At first I did so in order to avoid all the trammels of Court life in St Petersburg, the eternal gaiety of la Ville Lumière, and to be free to do what I liked and go where I chose,” she answered. “Soon, however, my life as Ella Laing became a stern reality, for I met and loved you.”

“Then you regretted?”

“I regretted only because I feared that I cared for you too much—that one day we should be compelled to part.”

“You knew that it was impossible for you to renounce both title and position,” I hazarded, looking at her gravely.

“I feared that my family would not allow me to do so,” she answered frankly. “Yet you proposed marriage; we became man and wife, and the first weeks of our new life were full of joy and happiness. Soon, however, the Nemesis that I dreaded fell upon me, crushing all desire for life from my heart. I was compelled to fly and leave you in ignorance.”

“And you forgot that in your escritoire there remained the stolen agreement?” I said slowly, looking straight into her pale face.

“Yes, I admit it,” she replied, in a voice almost inaudible, her dry lips moving convulsively. “So full was my mind of thoughts of you that I did not remember it until too late to return and secure it.”

“The woman who passed as Mrs Laing was not, of course, your mother?”

“She was no relation whatever. I paid her to pose as my maternal relative and keep house for me.”

“Where is she now?”

“I have no idea,” my wife answered. “She was a curious woman, and, strangely enough, she left London suddenly, on the very morning of the day of my departure.”

“And what of Beck?” I asked. “Did he know who you really were?”

“Scarcely,” she exclaimed. “Do you think he could have kept to himself the knowledge that I was a relative of the Tzar. Why, such a man would have related the fact that he knew me, and dined at our house, to every member of his club within twenty-four hours. You know, as well as I do, how he simply adores anybody with a title. It is the same with all the newly-wealthy crowd who are struggling to get into society.”

It was upon my tongue to explain to her the truth regarding the man-servant who passed as Helmholtz; nevertheless, I hesitated to do so at present because of my promise to Paul Verblioudovitch. The silence between us was protracted. She had covered her tear-stained face with her hands, and was sobbing.

Nevertheless, I was not moved with pity. Her determination to preserve her secret filled me with annoyance. I had expected her to make confession, but I plainly saw she had no intention of revealing the truth.

“Why did you associate with a woman of such doubtful reputation as Sonia Korolénko?” I asked abruptly at last.

“Because I wished to ascertain something,” she replied, in a harsh voice.

“She is scarcely your friend,” I observed.

“She is,” she declared. “I have known her for several years.”

“And you were actually aware of her true character while associating with her!” I exclaimed, rather surprised.

“Of course,” she sighed. “She is an adventuress, I know; nevertheless, she has proved my friend on many occasions.”

“That’s curious,” I remarked.

“Why?”

“Because she made certain allegations against you,” I answered.

“Yes,” she said, without betraying either anger or surprise. “I am fully aware of that. Strange though it may appear, her statements were made with a definite object.”

“Why did she utter such unfounded calumnies?”

“Because I wished to see whether you really loved me,” she answered, drawing herself up and regarding me with sudden calmness. At that moment she assumed the air of the Grand Duchess.

“I did love you,” I declared, “and I took no heed of her assertions. I notice, however,” I added, turning and pointing towards the piano, “I notice that you have placed in a position of conspicuousness the portrait of the man she declared was your lover. Side by side you have placed the pictures of betrayer and betrayed.”

She held her breath, gazing across to the spot I had indicated. Then, in a voice full of emotion, she said,—

“You were foully betrayed, Geoffrey, it is true, but the evil that was done has now been eradicated.”

“In other words, Ogle has paid the death penalty, eh?” I observed, with a grim expression of satisfaction.

“No, no, not that,” she protested seriously. “I mean that the strained relations between your country and mine have now been readjusted, and that a feeling more amicable than before prevails. Even the Earl of Warnham must admit the plain truth that no Power joins another in war unless it sees its own interest in so doing. Russia now, as before the effusion of hearts here in Paris, will attend to her own business, and will not send her Black Sea and Baltic Fleets flying out unless her interests bring her into collision with your British Government—and then it may happen it will not be the interest of France to fight. In the latter days of Louis Philippe there was talk of a Franco-Russian alliance, and there were people who knew—they did not think they knew on the best authority—that the two would be one next spring. Yet Louis Philippe went over to your England an exile by the useful name of Smith, and before long France and England were allied in war against my country. No, good counsel has prevailed, and by the very revelation of the secret alliance contracted between England and Germany, European peace has been secured.”

“You talk like a diplomatist,” I observed reflectively.

She shrugged her shoulders, and with a forced laugh said,—

“It is but natural that I should take an interest in the affairs of nations, I suppose.”

“Let us put them aside,” I said. “We are not rival diplomatists, but husband and wife; we—”

“Yes, yes,” she cried, interrupting. “I am happy because you are here with me; you, whose presence I have been fearing for so long. See! I smile and am happy;” and she gave vent to a hollow, discordant laugh.

“Happy because you have so successfully mystified me,” I sighed.

“No. Happy because I love you, Geoffrey,” she exclaimed, again throwing her arms affectionately about my neck, and raising her full red lips to mine. “Forgive me; do say you will forgive me,” she implored.

“How can I ever forget the ingenuity and deep cunning with which you deceived me,” I said. “I cannot but recollect how, on that night at Chesham House, Grodekoff congratulated you upon your marriage, yet how careful he was not to disclose to me your identity. Again, even my friend Verblioudovitch must have known who you really were. Why did he not tell me?”

“Because the staff of the Embassy had already received strict orders from St Petersburg not to acknowledge me,” she exclaimed, with a smile. “Lord Warnham fancied he recognised me, and spoke to the Ambassador; but the latter succeeded in assuring him that before marriage I was Ella Laing, and that the Grand Duchess Elizaveta Nicolayevna was at that moment with the Tzarina at Tzarskoïe-Selo. He believed it, and afterwards M’sieur Grodekoff assured me that was the first occasion he had been enabled to successfully deceive your lynx-eyed Foreign Minister.”

“You feared that the Earl might recognise you,” I exclaimed, surprised, for I now remembered the effect produced on my chief when his eyes had first fallen upon my wife. “You knew him, then?”

“Ah, no,” she faltered; “well, we were not exactly acquainted,” and she appeared rather confused, I thought, for her cheeks were suffused by the faintest suspicion of a blush.

“Did you expect he would be there?”

“No; you told me distinctly that he was not going, otherwise I should never have accompanied you,” she said frankly.

“Why?”

“Because I did not desire to meet him,” she replied, adding, with a laugh, “As it was, however, he was satisfied, and went away marvelling, no doubt, at the striking resemblance.”

“Yet you told me nothing,” I observed reproachfully.

“No; I was afraid,” she replied, in a serious voice. “With you I lived on from day to day, fearing detection, dreading lest you should discover some facts regarding my past, and by their light believe me to be an adventuress. Yet, at the same time, I worked on to achieve my freedom from a yoke which had become so galling that, now I loved you, I could endure it no longer.”

“And did you not succeed in breaking asunder this mysterious bond?” I inquired, half doubtfully.

“No,” she answered, shaking her head sorrowfully. “By an untoward circumstance, against which I had not provided, I was prevented, and compelled to flee.”

“If you will divulge absolutely nothing regarding the manner in which you became possessed of the stolen convention, or the reason you have masqueraded as my wife, you can at least tell me why you received so many communications regarding clandestine meetings, and explain who was your mysterious correspondent who signed himself ‘X.’”

Her heart beat quickly; she sighed, and lowered her gaze. She strove to preserve a demeanour of calm hauteur as befitted her station, but in vain.

“You have also found those letters,” she remarked, her voice trembling.

“Yes. Tell me the truth and put my mind at ease.”

“I can put your mind entirely at ease by assuring you, as I did after you detected me walking in Kensington Gardens, that I have had no lover besides yourself, Geoffrey,” she cried vehemently. “I have told you already that I worked to secure freedom of action in the future. Those letters were from one who rendered me considerable assistance.”

“What was his name?” I demanded quickly.

“I may not tell you that,” was her answer, uttered in a quiet, firm tone.

“Then, speaking plainly, you refuse, even now, to give me any elucidation whatever of this irritating mystery, or to allow me to obtain any corroboration of your remarkable story,” I said, with a sudden coldness.

She noticed my change of manner, and clung to me with uplifted face, pale and agitated. Her attempt to treat me as other than her husband had utterly failed.

“Ah! do not speak so cruelly,” she exclaimed, panting. “I—I really cannot bear it, Geoffrey—indeed I can’t. You must have seen that I loved you. I was, when I married, prepared to sacrifice all for your sake; nay, I did sacrifice everything until—until I was forced from you, and thrust back here to this place, that to me is little else than a gilded prison. Ah?” she cried, sobbing bitterly, and gazing around her in despair, “you cannot know how deeply I have sorrowed, how poignant has been the grief in the secret and inmost recesses of my heart; or how, through these months, while I have been travelling, I have longed to see you once again, and hear your voice telling me of your love. But, alas! without knowledge of the strange secret that seals my lips, you can know nothing—nothing!”

“I only know that I still adore you,” I said, with heartfelt fervency.

“Ah! I knew you did,” she exclaimed, raising her eager lips to mine in ecstasy. “I knew you would pity me when you came, yet I feared—I feared because I had lied to you, and deceived you so completely.” Then she kissed my lips, but I did not return her hot, passionate caress, although I confess it made my head reel.

“You have not forgiven,” she exclaimed, in a voice quivering with emotion, as she drew back. “You have not yet promised that you will still regard me as your wife.”

I hesitated. The startling fact of her true station, and the revelation of how ingeniously I had been tricked, caused me a slight revulsion of feeling. Somehow, as Grand Duchess she seemed an entirely different being to the plain, unassuming woman I had known as Ella. From the crown of her well-dressed hair to the point of her tiny, white kid shoe with its pearl embroidery, she was a patrician; the magnificence of her dress and jewels dazzled me, yet in her declarations of devotion her voice seemed to be marred by some indefinable but spurious ring.

Even now she was deceiving me. She would allow no word of her mysterious secret to pass her lips. It had always been the same. She would tell me absolutely nothing, vaguely asserting that to utter the truth would be to invoke an avenging power that she dreaded. I remembered how she had seemed terrorised on more than one occasion when I had demanded the truth, yet what I had learned that night increased my suspicions.

“If I forgive and seek no explanation of the past,” I said at last, “we must, I suppose, remain parted.”

“Ah, yes!” she gasped. “But only for a few short weeks. Then we will come together again never to part—never.”

“I can forgive on one condition only,” I said—“that you tell me the truth regarding the dastardly theft from me on the day of Dudley’s death.”

For an instant she was silent. Then, burying her face on my shoulder, sobbing, she answered in a tone so low as to be almost inaudible,—

“I cannot!”

Gently but firmly I put her from me, although she clung about my neck, urging me to pity her.

“I cannot pity you if you refuse to repose confidence in me,” I answered.

“I do not refuse,” she cried. “It is because my secret is of such a nature that, if divulged, it would wreck both your own happiness and mine.”

“Then to argue further is absolutely useless,” I answered coldly. “We must part.”

“You intend to leave me without forgiveness,” she wailed. “Ah, you will not be so cruel, Geoffrey. Surely you can see how passionately I love you.”

“You do not, however, love me sufficiently well to risk all consequences of divulging your mysterious secret,” I retorted, with almost brutal indifference, turning slowly from her.

“Then kiss me, Geoffrey,” she cried wildly, springing towards me and again entwining her soft arms about my neck. “Kiss me once again—if for the last time.”

Our lips met for an instant, then slowly I disengaged myself and strode towards the door. In her refusal to throw light upon the incidents that had so long held me perplexed and bewildered, I fancied she was shielding someone. Although crushed and downcast, I had resolved to go forth into the world again with my terrible burden of sorrow concealed beneath a smiling countenance. I regretted deeply that I had sought her, now that I was aware of the gulf that lay between us.

“Stay, Geoffrey! Stay. I cannot bear that you should go,” she wailed.

Halting, I turned towards her, saying,—

“When I have learnt the truth, then only will I return. Till then, I can have no faith in you.”

“But you are my husband, Geoffrey. I love you.”

She tottered forward unevenly, as if to follow me, but ere I could save her she staggered and fell forward upon the carpet in a dead faint.

I rang the bell violently, then, with a final glance at the blanched features of the woman I so dearly loved, I passed out, struggling through the brilliant, laughing throng of guests in the great hall, and was soon alone in utter dejection beneath the trees in the long, gas-lit avenue.

Chapter Thirty.Honour among Thieves.In brilliant sunshine, with the larks singing merrily in the cloudless vault of blue, and the air heavy with the scent of hay, I drove from Horsham station along the old turnpike road to Warnham Hall. A carriage had been sent for me, as usual, and as I sat back moodily, I fear I saw little of interest in the typical English landscape. The joys of the world were dead to me, consumed as I was by the one great sorrow of my life. My mind was full of the tristful past. I had reached London from Paris on the previous night, and in response to a telegram from the Earl, saying he had left Osborne and gone to the Hall, I had travelled down by the morning train.As we entered the park and drove up the broad, well-kept drive, the startled deer bounded away, and the emus raised their small heads with resentful, inquiring glance, but dashing along, the pair of spanking bays quickly brought me up to the great grey portico. As soon as I alighted I handed over my traps to one of the servants and walked straight to the great oak-panelled dining-room.As I paused at the door, it suddenly opened, and a man emerged so quickly that he almost stumbled over me. Our eyes met. I stood aghast, staring as if I had seen an apparition. In the semi-darkness of the corridor I doubt whether my face was quite distinguishable, but upon his there shone the slanting rays of light from an old diamond-paned window. In a instant I recognised the features, although I had only seen them once before.It was the foppish young man who had been Ella’s companion on that lonely walk in Kensington Gardens.Why he had visited the Earl was an inscrutable mystery. He regarded me in surprise for a single instant, then, thrusting both hands negligently into his trousers pockets, strode leisurely away along the corridor, a straw hat with black and white band placed jauntily at the back of his head. I watched him until he had turned the corner and disappeared, then I entered the great old-fashioned apartment.“Well, Deedes!” exclaimed the Earl, in a voice that was unusually cheerful. He was standing at the window gazing across the park, but my presence caused him to turn sharply. “Back again, then?”“Yes. I think I have fulfilled the mission,” I managed to exclaim. Truth to tell, this extraordinary encounter had caused me considerable perplexity and annoyance.“You have done excellently,” he said. “A telegram this morning from Lord Worthorpe shows with what tact you put matters to him, and I am glad to tell you that his interview with the President proved entirely satisfactory. I wired the news to Her Majesty only half-an-hour ago.”“I did my best,” I observed, perhaps a trifle carelessly, for there was another matter upon which I was anxious to consult my eccentric benefactor.“The task was one of unusual difficulty, I admit, Deedes, and you have shown yourself fully qualified for a post abroad. You shall have one before long.”At other times I should have warmly welcomed the enthusiasm of this speech, and thanked him heartily for the promise of a more lucrative position, but now, crushed and hopeless, I felt that joy had left my soul for ever, and merely replied,—“I am quite satisfied to be as I am. I do not care for the Continent.”“Why?” he inquired, surprised. “If you remain in the Service here you will have but little chance of distinguishing yourself, whereas in Rome, Constantinople or Berlin, you might obtain chances of promotion.”“I have been already in St Petersburg, you remember,” I said.“Ah, of course. But you didn’t get on very well there,” he said. “It is a difficult staff for younger men to work amongst. You’d be more comfortable in Vienna, perhaps. Viennese society would suit you, wouldn’t it?”“No,” I replied, very gravely. “I fear that henceforward I shall be, like yourself, a hater of society and all its ways.”“Oh?” he exclaimed, placing his hands beneath his coat-tails, a habit of his when about to enter any earnest consultation. “Why?”“Well, if you desire to know the truth,” I said, “it concerns my marriage.”“Ah, of course!” he observed, with deep sorrow. “I had quite forgotten that unfortunate affair. Yet time will cause you to forget. You are young, remember, Deedes—very young, compared with an old stager like myself.”“It is scarcely likely that I shall forget so easily,” I said, after a slight pause. “Since I have been in Paris I have made a discovery that has bewildered me. I confide in you because you are the only person who knows the secret of my wife’s flight.”“Quite right,” he said, regarding me with those piercing eyes shaded by their grey shaggy, brows. “If I can assist you or give you advice I am always pleased, for the romance of your marriage is the strangest I have ever known.”“Yes,” I acquiesced, “and the truth I have accidentally learnt still stranger. I have discovered that my wife was never Ella Laing, as I had believed, but that she really is the Grand Duchess Elizaveta Nicolayevna of Russia.”“The Grand Duchess!” he cried, amazed, his eyes aflame in an instant. “Are you certain of this; have you absolute proof?”“Absolute. I have seen her, and she has admitted it, and told me that she masqueraded in England as Ella Laing because she desired to avoid Court etiquette for a time,” I said.“Grodekoff lied,” he growled in an ebullition of anger. “I recognised her at the Embassy ball when you pointed her out, yet the Ambassador assured me that Her Highness was at that moment in Russia. We have both been tricked, Deedes. But he who laughs last laughs longest.”He had folded his arms and was standing resolutely before me, gazing upon the dead green carpet deep in thought.“The mystery becomes daily more puzzling,” he said at length, seating himself. “Tell me all that transpired between you.”I sank into a chair opposite the renowned chief of the Foreign Office and repeated the conversation that had taken place at our interview, while he listened attentively without hazarding a single remark.“Then again she would tell you nothing,” exclaimed the Earl, when I had concluded. “She refused absolutely to divulge her secret.”“Yes,” I said. “I promised to forgive if she would only tell me the truth. She refused; so we have parted.”“And what do you intend doing?”“I intend to seek the truth for myself,” I answered with fierce resolve.“How?”“I have not yet decided,” I said. “The reason she took such infinite pains to conceal her identity is incomprehensible, but her firm resolution to preserve her secret at all hazards appears as though she is in deadly fear of exposure by some person or other who can only be conciliated by absolute silence.”“Then we must discover who that person is.”I nodded, answering:—“I intend to do so.”Presently, after he had crossed and recrossed the room several times with hands behind his back, murmuring to himself in apparent discontent, but in tones that were undistinguishable, I turned to him saying,—“As I entered, a visitor left you. Who is he?”“Cecil Bingham. He is staying with me for a few days.”“A friend?”“Well—yes,” answered his Lordship, halting, and regarding me with no little surprise. “What do you know of him?”At first I hesitated, but on reflection resolved to explain the circumstances in which we had met, and slowly related to him how I had encountered him with my wife in Kensington Gardens on that well-remembered wintry afternoon.The Earl grew grave, and after observing that Bingham had arrived on the previous day to spend a week, he for some moments stood looking aimlessly out of the window upon the broad park and the great sheet of water glistening in the sunlight beyond. Then, muttering something I could not catch, he walked quickly back to the fireplace, and touched the electric bell.“Ask Mr Bingham to see me for a moment,” he exclaimed, when the man answered the summons, and in a few minutes the Earl’s guest came in with that affected jaunty air that had caused me to class him as a cad.When he had entered, the Earl himself walked to the door and softly closed it, then, turning, said in a hard, dry voice,—“This, Cecil, is my secretary, Deedes, the husband of the woman known as Ella Laing, with whom you have, I understand, been in correspondence, and have met clandestinely on many occasions.”“What do you mean?” he cried, resentfully, glancing from the Earl to myself. “I know no one of that name. You are mistaken.”“There is no mistake,” answered the great statesman, coldly, at the same time taking from an old oak bureau a large linen-lined envelope of the kind used in our Department. From a drawer he took one of his visitor’s letters, while from the envelope he drew forth a second letter. At a glance I saw that the latter was one of those mysterious missives signed “X” that had been received by my wife. Opening both, he placed them together and handed them to me without comment.They were in the same handwriting.“Do you deny having written that letter?” asked the Minister, sternly, at the same time showing him the note. He made a motion to take it, but suddenly drew away his hand. His lips contracted, his face grew pale, and with a gesture of feigned contempt he waved the Earl’s hand aside.“Do you deny it?” repeated my chief.He was still silent—his face a sufficient index to the agitation within him.“You have endeavoured to deceive me,” continued the Earl, harshly. “You have some fixed purpose in accepting my invitation, and coming here to visit me, but you were unaware that already I had knowledge of facts you have endeavoured so cunningly to conceal. It is useless to deny that you are acquainted with Deedes’s wife, for he recognises you as having walked with her in Kensington Gardens, while I have ascertained at last who she really is—that her name was never Ella Laing.”He started at this announcement. His lips moved, but no word escaped him.That the Earl should have learned the true name and station of my wife apparently disconcerted him. His complexion was of ashen hue; all his arrogance had left him, for he saw himself cornered. I stood glaring at him fiercely, for was not I face to face with the man whom my wife had met times without number, concealing from me all motive or duration of her absences? Some secret had existed between them—he was the man whom she apparently feared, and whose will she had obeyed. I felt that now, at last, I should ascertain the truth, and obtain a key to the strange perplexing enigma that had held me in doubt and suspicion through so many weary months.His shifty gaze met mine; I detected a fierce glint in his eyes.“Well?” exclaimed his Lordship, as determined as myself upon seeking a solution of the problem. “Now that you admit these mysterious meetings with Her Highness, perhaps you will explain their object.”“I admit nothing,” he answered in anger, knitting his brows. “Neither have I anything to explain.”“See!” the Earl said, drawing Ella’s photograph from the envelope. “Perhaps you will recognise this picture?” and his bony hand trembled with suppressed excitement as he placed it before him.At sight of it my wife’s strange friend drew a long breath. He was white to the lips. Never before had I witnessed such a complete change in any man in so short a period, and especially curious, it seemed, when I reflected that he had been charged with no very serious crime.“You may allege whatever it may please you,” he said at last, with affected sarcasm. “But a woman’s honour is safe in my hands.”“My wife’s honour!” I cried, with fierce indignation, walking towards him threateningly. I could no longer stand by in silence when I recollected what Ella had said about being compelled to act according to the will of another. She had, no doubt, been under the thrall of this overdressed dandy. “Now that we have met,” I exclaimed, “you shall explain to me, her husband.”With a quick movement he strode forward as if to escape us, but in an instant I had gripped him by the shoulder with fierce determination, whole the Earl himself, apprehending his intention, placed his back against the door.“Speak!” I cried wildly, shaking him in my anger. “You shall tell us the true nature of the secret between you and my wife, and prove your statement to our satisfaction, or, by heaven, I’ll thrash you as a cunning, cowardly cur!”

In brilliant sunshine, with the larks singing merrily in the cloudless vault of blue, and the air heavy with the scent of hay, I drove from Horsham station along the old turnpike road to Warnham Hall. A carriage had been sent for me, as usual, and as I sat back moodily, I fear I saw little of interest in the typical English landscape. The joys of the world were dead to me, consumed as I was by the one great sorrow of my life. My mind was full of the tristful past. I had reached London from Paris on the previous night, and in response to a telegram from the Earl, saying he had left Osborne and gone to the Hall, I had travelled down by the morning train.

As we entered the park and drove up the broad, well-kept drive, the startled deer bounded away, and the emus raised their small heads with resentful, inquiring glance, but dashing along, the pair of spanking bays quickly brought me up to the great grey portico. As soon as I alighted I handed over my traps to one of the servants and walked straight to the great oak-panelled dining-room.

As I paused at the door, it suddenly opened, and a man emerged so quickly that he almost stumbled over me. Our eyes met. I stood aghast, staring as if I had seen an apparition. In the semi-darkness of the corridor I doubt whether my face was quite distinguishable, but upon his there shone the slanting rays of light from an old diamond-paned window. In a instant I recognised the features, although I had only seen them once before.

It was the foppish young man who had been Ella’s companion on that lonely walk in Kensington Gardens.

Why he had visited the Earl was an inscrutable mystery. He regarded me in surprise for a single instant, then, thrusting both hands negligently into his trousers pockets, strode leisurely away along the corridor, a straw hat with black and white band placed jauntily at the back of his head. I watched him until he had turned the corner and disappeared, then I entered the great old-fashioned apartment.

“Well, Deedes!” exclaimed the Earl, in a voice that was unusually cheerful. He was standing at the window gazing across the park, but my presence caused him to turn sharply. “Back again, then?”

“Yes. I think I have fulfilled the mission,” I managed to exclaim. Truth to tell, this extraordinary encounter had caused me considerable perplexity and annoyance.

“You have done excellently,” he said. “A telegram this morning from Lord Worthorpe shows with what tact you put matters to him, and I am glad to tell you that his interview with the President proved entirely satisfactory. I wired the news to Her Majesty only half-an-hour ago.”

“I did my best,” I observed, perhaps a trifle carelessly, for there was another matter upon which I was anxious to consult my eccentric benefactor.

“The task was one of unusual difficulty, I admit, Deedes, and you have shown yourself fully qualified for a post abroad. You shall have one before long.”

At other times I should have warmly welcomed the enthusiasm of this speech, and thanked him heartily for the promise of a more lucrative position, but now, crushed and hopeless, I felt that joy had left my soul for ever, and merely replied,—

“I am quite satisfied to be as I am. I do not care for the Continent.”

“Why?” he inquired, surprised. “If you remain in the Service here you will have but little chance of distinguishing yourself, whereas in Rome, Constantinople or Berlin, you might obtain chances of promotion.”

“I have been already in St Petersburg, you remember,” I said.

“Ah, of course. But you didn’t get on very well there,” he said. “It is a difficult staff for younger men to work amongst. You’d be more comfortable in Vienna, perhaps. Viennese society would suit you, wouldn’t it?”

“No,” I replied, very gravely. “I fear that henceforward I shall be, like yourself, a hater of society and all its ways.”

“Oh?” he exclaimed, placing his hands beneath his coat-tails, a habit of his when about to enter any earnest consultation. “Why?”

“Well, if you desire to know the truth,” I said, “it concerns my marriage.”

“Ah, of course!” he observed, with deep sorrow. “I had quite forgotten that unfortunate affair. Yet time will cause you to forget. You are young, remember, Deedes—very young, compared with an old stager like myself.”

“It is scarcely likely that I shall forget so easily,” I said, after a slight pause. “Since I have been in Paris I have made a discovery that has bewildered me. I confide in you because you are the only person who knows the secret of my wife’s flight.”

“Quite right,” he said, regarding me with those piercing eyes shaded by their grey shaggy, brows. “If I can assist you or give you advice I am always pleased, for the romance of your marriage is the strangest I have ever known.”

“Yes,” I acquiesced, “and the truth I have accidentally learnt still stranger. I have discovered that my wife was never Ella Laing, as I had believed, but that she really is the Grand Duchess Elizaveta Nicolayevna of Russia.”

“The Grand Duchess!” he cried, amazed, his eyes aflame in an instant. “Are you certain of this; have you absolute proof?”

“Absolute. I have seen her, and she has admitted it, and told me that she masqueraded in England as Ella Laing because she desired to avoid Court etiquette for a time,” I said.

“Grodekoff lied,” he growled in an ebullition of anger. “I recognised her at the Embassy ball when you pointed her out, yet the Ambassador assured me that Her Highness was at that moment in Russia. We have both been tricked, Deedes. But he who laughs last laughs longest.”

He had folded his arms and was standing resolutely before me, gazing upon the dead green carpet deep in thought.

“The mystery becomes daily more puzzling,” he said at length, seating himself. “Tell me all that transpired between you.”

I sank into a chair opposite the renowned chief of the Foreign Office and repeated the conversation that had taken place at our interview, while he listened attentively without hazarding a single remark.

“Then again she would tell you nothing,” exclaimed the Earl, when I had concluded. “She refused absolutely to divulge her secret.”

“Yes,” I said. “I promised to forgive if she would only tell me the truth. She refused; so we have parted.”

“And what do you intend doing?”

“I intend to seek the truth for myself,” I answered with fierce resolve.

“How?”

“I have not yet decided,” I said. “The reason she took such infinite pains to conceal her identity is incomprehensible, but her firm resolution to preserve her secret at all hazards appears as though she is in deadly fear of exposure by some person or other who can only be conciliated by absolute silence.”

“Then we must discover who that person is.”

I nodded, answering:—“I intend to do so.”

Presently, after he had crossed and recrossed the room several times with hands behind his back, murmuring to himself in apparent discontent, but in tones that were undistinguishable, I turned to him saying,—

“As I entered, a visitor left you. Who is he?”

“Cecil Bingham. He is staying with me for a few days.”

“A friend?”

“Well—yes,” answered his Lordship, halting, and regarding me with no little surprise. “What do you know of him?”

At first I hesitated, but on reflection resolved to explain the circumstances in which we had met, and slowly related to him how I had encountered him with my wife in Kensington Gardens on that well-remembered wintry afternoon.

The Earl grew grave, and after observing that Bingham had arrived on the previous day to spend a week, he for some moments stood looking aimlessly out of the window upon the broad park and the great sheet of water glistening in the sunlight beyond. Then, muttering something I could not catch, he walked quickly back to the fireplace, and touched the electric bell.

“Ask Mr Bingham to see me for a moment,” he exclaimed, when the man answered the summons, and in a few minutes the Earl’s guest came in with that affected jaunty air that had caused me to class him as a cad.

When he had entered, the Earl himself walked to the door and softly closed it, then, turning, said in a hard, dry voice,—

“This, Cecil, is my secretary, Deedes, the husband of the woman known as Ella Laing, with whom you have, I understand, been in correspondence, and have met clandestinely on many occasions.”

“What do you mean?” he cried, resentfully, glancing from the Earl to myself. “I know no one of that name. You are mistaken.”

“There is no mistake,” answered the great statesman, coldly, at the same time taking from an old oak bureau a large linen-lined envelope of the kind used in our Department. From a drawer he took one of his visitor’s letters, while from the envelope he drew forth a second letter. At a glance I saw that the latter was one of those mysterious missives signed “X” that had been received by my wife. Opening both, he placed them together and handed them to me without comment.

They were in the same handwriting.

“Do you deny having written that letter?” asked the Minister, sternly, at the same time showing him the note. He made a motion to take it, but suddenly drew away his hand. His lips contracted, his face grew pale, and with a gesture of feigned contempt he waved the Earl’s hand aside.

“Do you deny it?” repeated my chief.

He was still silent—his face a sufficient index to the agitation within him.

“You have endeavoured to deceive me,” continued the Earl, harshly. “You have some fixed purpose in accepting my invitation, and coming here to visit me, but you were unaware that already I had knowledge of facts you have endeavoured so cunningly to conceal. It is useless to deny that you are acquainted with Deedes’s wife, for he recognises you as having walked with her in Kensington Gardens, while I have ascertained at last who she really is—that her name was never Ella Laing.”

He started at this announcement. His lips moved, but no word escaped him.

That the Earl should have learned the true name and station of my wife apparently disconcerted him. His complexion was of ashen hue; all his arrogance had left him, for he saw himself cornered. I stood glaring at him fiercely, for was not I face to face with the man whom my wife had met times without number, concealing from me all motive or duration of her absences? Some secret had existed between them—he was the man whom she apparently feared, and whose will she had obeyed. I felt that now, at last, I should ascertain the truth, and obtain a key to the strange perplexing enigma that had held me in doubt and suspicion through so many weary months.

His shifty gaze met mine; I detected a fierce glint in his eyes.

“Well?” exclaimed his Lordship, as determined as myself upon seeking a solution of the problem. “Now that you admit these mysterious meetings with Her Highness, perhaps you will explain their object.”

“I admit nothing,” he answered in anger, knitting his brows. “Neither have I anything to explain.”

“See!” the Earl said, drawing Ella’s photograph from the envelope. “Perhaps you will recognise this picture?” and his bony hand trembled with suppressed excitement as he placed it before him.

At sight of it my wife’s strange friend drew a long breath. He was white to the lips. Never before had I witnessed such a complete change in any man in so short a period, and especially curious, it seemed, when I reflected that he had been charged with no very serious crime.

“You may allege whatever it may please you,” he said at last, with affected sarcasm. “But a woman’s honour is safe in my hands.”

“My wife’s honour!” I cried, with fierce indignation, walking towards him threateningly. I could no longer stand by in silence when I recollected what Ella had said about being compelled to act according to the will of another. She had, no doubt, been under the thrall of this overdressed dandy. “Now that we have met,” I exclaimed, “you shall explain to me, her husband.”

With a quick movement he strode forward as if to escape us, but in an instant I had gripped him by the shoulder with fierce determination, whole the Earl himself, apprehending his intention, placed his back against the door.

“Speak!” I cried wildly, shaking him in my anger. “You shall tell us the true nature of the secret between you and my wife, and prove your statement to our satisfaction, or, by heaven, I’ll thrash you as a cunning, cowardly cur!”

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