'Captain Rallywood!'

Rallywood started. The Duke made him a sign to approach. Then, rising from his chair, he took the young man's arm, and leaning heavily upon it, moved towards the card-room, meeting Unziar with Mdlle. Selpdorf on the way.

'Hey, Mademoiselle Valerie,' he stopped abruptly, 'would you teach my Guards treason?'

'To teach your Highness's Guards treason is impossible!' replied Valerie, with a slight lifting of her proud head.

'The influence of a beautiful woman has no limit,' retorted the Duke.

Valerie's red lips trembled.

'Generations have already proved the fidelity of the Selpdorfs has also no limit. But I beg you to accept an apology for my foolish words.'

'But such words from a Selpdorf!'

'We have always been loyal, sire.'

The Duke shook his head sadly.

'But the world changes—what has been is not. And the first reason now-a-days why a thing should no longer be, is the fact that once it was!'

Valerie was almost as tall as the Duke himself, and she looked level into his weary eyes.

'Have we changed with the world, sire?'

'Not—yet,' replied the Duke bitterly; then, struck, as it seemed, by the intrinsic spirit of the young imperial face gazing into his own, he added, 'Though you tempt a man to believe in you, Mademoiselle!'

'I say this before your Highness and these gentlemen of your Guard,' Valerie said, her eyes flashing. 'May the Selpdorf, who ceases to be true to your Highness and to Maasau, die!'

In after time events brought back the vehement words to the minds of the three who heard them.

'And I say, "Amen!"' The Duke took her hand and added, 'Which proves, Valerie, that you have conquered your old friend, Gustave of Maasau. Come, Captain Rallywood, half-an-hour's play, and then to bed.'

Valerie looked up at Unziar as she walked beside him.

'And yet you would not believe me?'

'Come!' was Unziar's reply.

She laid her hand within his arm and passed silently through the reception rooms beside him.

She felt that the time had come when Unziar could no more be put off by the little wiles and evasions a woman employs who has nothing to give to the man who loves her but a definite answer. Two luxurious chairs stood ready for occupants in the nook to which he led her, but he had no thought to give to conventionalities. He stood before her keen and white, and desperate with doubt.

'Valerie, what does all this mean?'

Though only a girl in years, Valerie was a woman in experience. Experience, not gained altogether at first hand, be it understood, but such as a clever woman easily gathers from the lives of those about her. As the motherless daughter of M. Selpdorf, she had had exceptional opportunities. Thrown into the midst of a brilliant but vicious society, her eyes had seen more of the bare under-texture of life than was perhaps desirable; she had looked upon the shift and drift of things political with an ever-present knowledge that there danger lurked and waited; she had learned the uses of reserve, and something of the art of resource; and, above all, her womanly perceptions had taken on a strange edge of sensitive power, due to her father's quaint methods of pointing out to her the difference between the seeming and the true. By reason of this premature insight into the motives and stress of human existence she gained in safety and strength as her father desired; but on the other hand, she had lost the sense of happy irresponsibility that goes so far towards making up one of the sweetest essentials of youth. Luckily there is one thing which can never be quite destroyed at secondhand—the romance and illusions that beguile boyhood and girlhood, and the liability to be so beguiled still lived in Valerie's strong and vivid nature.

'Shall I swear that every word I spoke to the Duke just now is true?' she asked coldly. 'Although, of course, even that would not convince you!'

'No, I suppose not,' he said drearily. 'You spoke openly of your hope to be maid of honour to Madame de Sagan when she became Duchess of Maasau—which can only mean one thing. Rallywood heard and told me exactly.'

'You discussed me with Captain Rallywood?' she flashed out.

Unziar's glance darkened again with a new suspicion.

'Should you object?' he asked.

'As it happens, I should, particularly.'

He bit savagely at his moustache.

'What is wrong with Rallywood?'

'He is an Englishman. Besides, I do not care to be discussed amongst the men of the Guard!'

'How like a woman you put me off! I did not discuss you with Rallywood, of course, as you very well know. I asked him the single question as to what had actually been said. I knew he would not lie to me.'

'The Guard keep their falsehoods for outsiders, I suppose?'

Unziar liked this harping upon Rallywood less and less. He moved irritably.

'But that is not all. You have admitted that you are going to marry Elmur. That also signifies—something.'

'Whatever it signifies, it does not signify that I am disloyal to Maasau.'

'You have seen for yourself that there is a change here at Sagan,' argued Unziar. 'No German has ever been welcome here before. We can but guess at treason.'

'Hush! it cannot be that, since my father has knowledge of it.'

This was an entirely unexpected development of the difficulty. Unziar felt the check, and even in his turbulence he changed his venue.

'It may be so—let that rest; but nothing can alter me in the belief that Elmur is the natural enemy of the State. Valerie, he can give you many things that I cannot offer you. But my love—No, hear me for once. You must hear me, Valerie! You know that I have loved you always, I don't remember when it began—I was a boy. But Elmur at the best must have loved others before you. Whereas I—I have thought of no one else all my life!'

'Why, I have heard differently, Anthony,' she interposed, with a smile that was a vain effort to temper the intensity of his mood.

He stamped with his spurred heel upon a fallen flower.

'I don't pretend to be a saint; I am what other men are. You see I do not deceive you even now. But give me the chance and I will prove to you that the Unziars can be faithful. Valerie, give me your love! For God's sake don't say you cannot! Give me your love!'

'Anthony!'

It almost shocked her to see Unziar—cold and cynical Unziar—pleading as a man pleads for escape from death, with a terrible self-abandonment.

'Wait! Tell me this. Did you choose von Elmur?'

'My—we—it has nothing to do with that kind of thing.'

'I thought not! Then you will sacrifice yourself for an idea? You shall not!'

'Anthony, you are very good to me—you have always been. I know that if I felt for you as you wish me to feel, then you could help me. But I don't! As long as I can remember you have been my playfellow, my brother; but not more—never this! Anthony, I love you, but not—but not—You have been so honest with me that whatever it costs I must be honest with you. I can never do as you wish!'

Unziar listened rather to some far-off tide of thought, as it seemed, than to her words—thoughts that flowed in upon him and quenched hope.

'You do not love me; Elmur is beside the mark—beside the question of love—altogether. Then, Valerie, whom do you love?'

She gave him a frightened glance, and drew in her breath as one who parries a blow.

'There is no one'; then, added more firmly, 'You are mistaken—there is no one.'

'If that be so,' responded the young man sullenly, 'then my chance is as good as another's. I shall not give up hope! Remember that. But I have thought that Rallywood——'

Valerie recalled the coldness of the averted grey eyes, and the memory stung her.

'He hates me,' she replied with a haughty smile, 'as I hate him!'

'Rallywood hates you?' he repeated in angry astonishment.

'Yes; but whatever he may feel for me I return in full!'

'Valerie, then you love no one? Say it again.'

The jingle of spur and scabbard came through the flower-hung spaces, and Rallywood passed within a few feet of them. He was whistling softly as he walked along with an easy swing of his strong shoulders.

'I love——' Valerie began, and stopped short, for Rallywood turned in his stride as if he felt their eyes upon him.

'His Highness has sent for you, Unziar,' he said.



CHAPTER XIII.

LOVE IN TWO SHADES.

All the next morning the snow fell persistently, and Sagan might have been, as far as appearances went, a castle built in the air. Above, below, around, the snow eddied like a fairy torrent, beating against the solid walls and curling in curious ringed swirls about its buttresses as water beats about a rock in midstream.

But the dominant grey of the outside world cast no appreciable reflection on the spirits of Madame de Sagan's guests, with whom gaiety and wild devices for killing time were necessary and familiar things.

But to Valerie the same suggestion of fear and unrest that had oppressed her on the previous evening still held its silent sway over the place. She stood at the broad window of the main staircase watching the swift atoms of snow drift past, each one by itself a mere melting point, but, in their millions, mighty. She shivered and looked round with an odd sense of apprehension, as if the vague blind storm outside had its counterpart in a vague blind danger within.

A tall man came leaping up the staircase. He stopped beside her. She looked up at him, her deep eyes were full of some disturbing thought.

'Captain Rallywood, will you tell Major Counsellor from me,' she began at once, in a low, hurried voice, 'that, in spite of what he has heard of me, he must still believe Maasau is the dearest thing on earth to me. Tell him that, if needful, I am ready to prove it with my life! He may make quite sure I meant all I said to him yesterday.'

Rallywood stood silent. The passion of her voice and speech echoed in her own ears and suddenly seemed all excessive and uncalled for; a blush—half anger, half shame—rushed over her face, bringing tears to her eyes. Why was it decreed that she should always, in some small foolish way, appear to disadvantage before this wretched Englishman.

'I will tell him,' said Rallywood at last, 'though I cannot understand.'

'No, you cannot understand! You are so cold, so self-centred that the feelings and tumults which trouble most of us appear as weaknesses to you. Since you cannot understand us, you should not judge us, we others, who, in our own spasmodic way, love our country as you serve yours—steadily and with a whole heart.'

Now, John Rallywood was perplexed. He longed to set himself right with her. Her very accusations, her readiness to find fault, which might have made matters clear to some men, only disheartened him with a renewed sense of her dislike.

'You hate my nation,' he said, after a pause of consideration, 'therefore you condemn me, not because of anything I have done, but on general grounds, putting the worst construction on—on everything. I wonder why you judge me so hardly?'

Valerie laughed, her red lip finely edged with scorn.

'On the contrary, you judge us! Who made you a judge over us? You regard us—you English—with that straight steady look. I suppose you feel what futile creatures we others are, with our shifting moods and passions, our little furies and desperations! Do you remember the night you joined the Guard—the night in the Cloister of St. Anthony? How I trembled and feared for you, I'—she laughed again—'I even wanted to help you! How absurd it all seemed to you, didn't it? I remember you were very cool and quiet, and I suppose you thought it very foolish—one of those unnecessary, extravagant emotions in which we inferior races are apt to indulge!'

'Stop!' Rallywood cut her short with a peremptory word, 'I will not allow you to say such things of yourself nor—of me!'

Valerie threw back her head with the slight haughty lift he knew so well.

'You are rather too certain of your own power,' she said.

'You say you remember that night?—not so well as I do? You think I am very sure of myself. And yet I have been mistaken on points that touch me close. I thought that night when I knew I might never see the morning—I dared to fancy that we—you and I—understood each other—a little.' He waited, but Valerie had turned away; her profile looked exquisite, but cold, against the dark shutter as she watched the driving snow. 'So I was the fool after all, you see!' he ended lamely.

According to the immemorial fashion of love, they understood and misunderstood each other alternately playing high and low at every other moment upon the wide gamut of feeling, touching faint sweet notes that would echo for ever.

Rallywood's self-control was giving way a little, and she instinctively felt her power and used it.

'I wonder what you really think of us behind that quiet alertness of yours,' she said lightly, 'I believe I did imagine I—understood you a little that night; but I imagine it no longer! Perhaps I misjudge you now, but it cannot matter; you told me once you knew how to wait, and of course you are certain that all unfair opinions of you must come right in the end.'

But Rallywood passed over her many sentences to seize the central idea that appealed to him.

'Yes, I have learned to wait. I told you that everything comes to him who waits. Unfortunately a proverb is true often, not always. One thing can never come to me however long I wait. For me there is no hope.'

'I don't know what you hope for,' replied the girl, slowly, as if she were choosing her words; but she hardly knew what she said, she was lost in a multitude of dreams, and her words but filled in the rare crevices between them. 'I thought that every man carried his own fate in his own hand.'

'A man can fight the tangible, but no man can struggle against the ordinary laws of social life. We may laugh at conventional methods, but even in Revonde there are some which must be yielded to.'

'I don't think,' said Valerie, 'we yield to many in Revonde.'

Rallywood saw a group of people advancing towards them. Valerie, with her changes of mood and manner, distracted him, and drove him on to say what he had resolved never to be tempted into saying.

'I am a soldier—only a soldier; I gain a livelihood, but no more. I have no luck and no genius. To make a fortune or a name is beyond me. And without fortune many desirable things are impossible.'

Valerie turned upon him a bewildering smile.

'I shall know for the future, Captain Rallywood, what you are thinking of. You will be thinking, for all those grave eyes of yours, of the fortune you cannot make!'

'Not quite that, Mademoiselle,' he answered, 'I shall be thinking of the girl I cannot win.'

Valerie found herself drawn away from him by the passing group. She was aware of a warm throb at her heart, she was trembling a little, and the fear of the morning had temporarily vanished. For no definite reason which she could afterwards discover, she felt suddenly happy.

By evening the tsa had blown away the snow-clouds for the time, and a thin moon gleamed fitfully over the wide expanses of white. Remote, muffled in leagues of snow, and alive with hungry passions and unscrupulous strength, the Castle of Sagan did not, on that wild January night, offer desirable housing to the Grand Duke of Maasau. He had yet some thirty hours to spend as his cousin's guest before he could return to his capital without showing suspicion or giving offence. A hundred times he wished himself back in his great palace by the river bank where the squadrons of the Guard lay within call. But he bore himself well notwithstanding, and although, on the plea of chill and fatigue, he kept to his rooms more than usual, his short appearances in public left in one sense nothing to be desired. He did not carry himself as a man in mortal anxiety, but was as dissatisfied, as discourteous, and as disagreeable as it was his custom to be.

Late in the afternoon Madame de Sagan retired to take some rest before dinner. Wrapped in lace and silk, she was standing in front of her mirror with her women about her, when the Count entered. At his first imperious word the attendants vanished.

Isolde continued to stare into the glass like one fascinated, for in it she not only saw the reflection of her own slender white-clad figure, but over her shoulder the fierce face she dreaded.

For a long minute husband and wife remained reading each other's faces in the looking-glass.

She had seen aversion and menace in the Count's lowering face many a time before, and was at length beginning to believe the almost impossible fact to be true, that a man lived who hated her, over whom her beauty had no power.

The young Countess shivered in mortal terror.

'Simon,' she wailed suddenly, 'you are changed,—you do not love me any more!'

A broad smile flitted across the savage old face.

'You are a fool, but a very pretty fool, Isolde, and for that a man might forgive you many things. Now listen to me. After you retire to your rooms for the night, keep close to them, no matter what you hear. There may be a disturbance, and you had better have Selpdorf's daughter to keep you company.' His expression changed as he spoke of Valerie.

'There is danger,' she gasped, 'danger. What is it, oh, tell me what it is!' Her first fear leaping towards Rallywood.

He stared into her shrinking eyes.

'If you ever hope to be Duchess of Maasau,' he answered significantly, 'leave Valerie's lovers, Unziar and the Englishman, to take care of themselves. Keep your tongue silent! Remember!' He caught her slender wrist roughly as he spoke and pressed it to enforce the command.

The Countess made no reply, but her fingers closed in upon her palms.

'Come, give me a kiss, and promise me to do so much towards making yourself a Grand Duchess.' He brushed her lips carelessly with his moustache.

The caress brought no response; but as he bent over her she whispered, 'Have mercy on me Simon!' (it was a prayer born rather of some vague instinct of danger than any defined fear); 'don't kill me!'

He put his thick arm round her and shook her impatiently.

'Kill you, Isolde? Are you mad? You are far more useful to me living than dead. Get rid of your silly fears, and remember—silence!'

Then putting her back on the couch with more gentleness than might have been expected of him, he walked out of the room. For a little while she sat listening, then opened her eyes and glanced about her. Yes, he was gone. But it was characteristic of her that at such a time her chief and overpowering thought was Valerie as a rival! 'Valerie's lovers, Unziar and the Englishman!' A score of trifles rushed back upon her memory; but no it could not be. It was one of the Count's amiable ways to suggest causes of jealousy to his wife. He meant nothing, for what could he know? The soothing conviction grew upon her that the taunt was thrown at her for what it was worth. Oh, how she hated Sagan—hated his bloodshot, beast's eyes, his mocking laugh, his cruel hands, his crueller gibes!

She pushed back the lace from her wrist and saw the thin parallels of bruised flesh his fingers had left—entirely unaware, it must be owned—upon her whiteness. Ah, she would show these to Rallywood—as a proof that she was in danger, that she actually needed his protection, and so win him from his post, which to-night would become the post of death.

All her little vain soul thrilled within her at the possibility of triumph—of defeating the honour of such a man—of winning him from his watch for love's sake—of overcoming the scruples that had for so long a time stood out against her wiles.

And yet in her poor way she loved him—loved him as she would probably never love another. Some women are made in that way, they take pride in the loftiness of the height from which they drag men down. Then he must be saved, she told herself, at all costs saved! He would live to thank her yet. A thought of him lying dead in his blood by the dark embrasure that masked the entrance to the royal apartments flashed across her mind. She stretched out her arms with a soft call like a bird's.

'Oh, love, love, I will save you!'



CHAPTER XIV.

HALF A PROMISE.

Ten minutes later a big emblazoned footman brought Rallywood a summons from the Countess, as he stood talking to Counsellor and the Russian attache.

As he moved away Blivinski placed a bony impressive finger on Counsellor's sleeve.

'If he were not English, you could not trust him,' he said enigmatically.

Counsellor raised his bushy eyebrows, with a humorous glance. 'We have had our day.'

'Ah, my friend, you know most things. Also I know a very few,' Blivinski said significantly, 'but with your nation patriotism is not a virtue, it is a part of your physical system. You sacrifice all for your country, not because it is right to do so, but simply because you cannot help it; the good God made you so. Therefore this young man, in face of the supreme temptation of youth, may be trusted. I speak of these things now because you will remember, in good time, that those who are against you will not dare to injure'—he removed the finger to his own breast—'us also!'

And the little silent swarthy man slipped away almost before Counsellor realised that Russia, the mighty, had given him a pledge which might prove of immense value in the uncertain future.

Rallywood found the young Countess crouching and shivering near a wood fire. She was magnificently dressed in rich tones of royal purple, that accentuated her delicate fairness and beauty, and a small diadem of amethysts shone in the pale gold of her hair.

She took no notice of his entrance, though she was acutely conscious that his eyes were on her. She was hungry of his gaze, and she believed in the power of her own loveliness.

'Jack,' she said at last, 'come here. I wonder now why I sent for you, but I am miserable.'

She looked up at him heavy-lidded.

There was concern in his voice as he answered her.

'If I told you all,' she went on, 'you would not believe me. I am now—to-night—in great danger.'

'In danger? Here? where you are surrounded by friends,' replied Rallywood, beginning to wish himself well out of it. Had there been no Valerie Selpdorf, or even had he not uttered those impulsive words which, to his mind, changed his position from the indefinite to the definite, the history of his life might have been turned into another channel that evening. As it was, though Valerie remained free as the wind, he felt himself to be in some vague manner bound to her.

'Nonsense! You know how useless all these friends would be if things went wrong with me. They flatter the Countess of Sagan, but not one of them would make the smallest sacrifice for Isolde, the woman. I do not know if you, even you, are my friend. We talked about it—long ago. But I have not put you to the test, and I—I often wonder if our friendship still remains alive.'

'I am as I always was,' he parried.

'I wonder if that is true?' She raised her drooping face again. 'I don't know how to believe you. Why will you keep up this pretence of—of reserve between us? You never tell me your troubles, and I suppose you have them, like the rest of us. We should be quite old friends now, and yet you are always so'—she hesitated for a word—'courteous. Are you ever angry, for example?'

'Very often.'

'But not with me, and I have given you cause many a time. If you would be angry with me even once, Jack, causelessly angry, then I should know I had a friend to whom I could go if I were in trouble—in such trouble as I am to-night!'

'If there is anything I can do for you——'

The quiet tone annoyed her. She rose quickly.

'If—if—if! Any man could help me who—cared.'

'I do care.'

'I wonder,' she said wistfully, 'how much you mean of what you say. I have no standard to judge you by, because you are not quite like other men. But I owe you my life, and I sometimes think it gives me a claim on you.'

'I can never pretend you owe me anything: you were quite safe; no accident could have happened. You are far too good a horsewoman, though you were nervous for the moment.' He spoke with a careless affectionateness, for the young Countess in her helpless beauty appealed to him.

'Look at me!' she said tragically. 'Do I seem hateful?'

'You are a young queen,' he paused, and added, 'a young queen—seen in a dream! You are too ethereal to be of common earth.'

'I am of common earth like any other woman,' she answered with a forlorn little smile; 'I can be afraid and—I can love!'

'Afraid? In your own Castle, among your own people?'

'Yes, Jack. Don't think I am silly! It is quite true. You say you have not changed, that you are still my friend. You are my only one then! I must look to you for protection; I have no one else in the whole world.' She was very near him, her little cold hand had caught his in her vehemence; she looked apprehensively behind her, and then spoke low in his ear. 'I am afraid of my husband. He wishes to be rid of me—I have seen it in his eyes. Sagan will kill me! Do you remember the night of the ball, when I gave you the firefly? Have you kept it, I wonder? I said mine would be a short life. It is true. Sagan is tired of me, and I—Jack, I—loathe him!'

'But——' Rallywood began.

'You don't believe me? See this!' she pushed back a band of black velvet from her arm, and held it out to him. This touched him more than all; the slender blue-veined wrist with the marks of those cruel fingers clasped about it moved him far more than the temptations of her delicate beauty. With an almost involuntary desire to comfort her as one might comfort and please a child, he bent above her hand and kissed the bruises.

Isolde clung to him with a quick sob of relief.

'Promise me, Jack, that you will save me! When danger threatens me I will send for you. You will come? You promise?'

But Rallywood was not in the least in love with Madame de Sagan for all his pity. He was again master of himself, and an odd suspicion flashed across him.

'I feel certain you are mistaken,' he repeated; 'but you have another friend who can be of more service than I just now, Mademoiselle Selpdorf.'

The Countess sank back into her chair.

'What do you know of Valerie?' she asked coldly.

'Very little, but——'

'Thanks! I know her better than you do. I don't choose that she should amuse herself at my expense.

As it is, she has brought most of this trouble upon me.'

Rallywood may have been sagacious enough on some points, but on this particular one he was a fool. He was not at all aware that Madame de Sagan with her innocent eyes and small brain was sifting him.

'But she meant to defend you!' he exclaimed.

She laughed softly, and if a woman could have compassed the ruin of a man by means of love and temptation, Rallywood was lost from that hour, for the rivalry of Valerie Selpdorf added the one incentive of bitter resolve that drives such slight-brained jealous souls to the last limit of reckless endeavour.

'When I find myself in danger I will remind you of the firefly, and you will come then, Jack!' she said, 'you promise?'

'When you want me, I will come—as soon as I may.'

'But that is only half a promise.'

'Yes,' he replied, 'but you know the other half is pledged already.'

She sprang up with clenched hands.

'What? To Valerie? Already?'

'No, Madame, to the Duke.'

'Ah, the Duke is well served!' she said sadly as he bowed at the door, but she laughed to herself when it closed behind him, 'Yet you will come when I send for you, Jack!'



CHAPTER XV.

COLENDORP.

As the night deepened the wind again rose, its many voices howled about the Castle and compelled the ear to listen. It volleyed yelling through the ravines, it roared among the lean pine-trees like the surf on an open coast, it swept round the Castle walls in long-drawn infuriated screaming that seemed charged with echoes of wild pain and remoteness and fear. The narrow moon had long since sunk behind the rack of storm-driven clouds, and left the mountains steeped in a tumultuous milk-coloured darkness of snow and wind.

Within the massive walls the reception rooms were closed and empty at last; the guests had separated and night had taken possession, but not rest.

Valerie, alone in her room and oppressed by the vague infection of wakefulness and fear, moved from window to window listening to the wild noises that were abroad, and trying to reason herself out of the conviction of coming danger, which held her from sleep.

She had thrown back the curtains from the windows. Her room occupied an exposed corner of the Castle tower, which stood on the edge of the gorge through which the Kofn chafed its way to the plains below the Ford. A narrow strip of ground scarcely six feet in width alone separated the wall of the tower from the precipice that fell sheer away to the foaming water far below.

She tried to read but could not fix her attention. Her heart seemed in her ears and answered to every sound.

And all the while in the scattered rooms and shadowy passages the drama which involved her life was being slowly played out. Below on the ground floor of the tower Elmur and Sagan sat together.

'By the way, my dear Count, have you ever thought of the possibility of Captain Colendorp's refusal to see things in our light?' Elmur was asking, after an interval filled in by the noises of wind and water which could not be shut out of the Castle on such a night.

The Count looked up and scowled.

'Leave the management of the affair to me,' he said. 'Unless I were sure of my man, I should not be such a fool as to bring him here to listen to what I shall say to him to-night;' then he added as an afterthought, 'When once we have begun, Baron von Elmur, there can be no going back. Remember that! The game must now be played to the end, whatever that end is.'

Elmur pondered. Sagan was a bad tool, at once stubborn and secretive, cunning enough to recognise and to resent handling, thickheaded and vain enough to blunder ruinously. And Elmur found at the last and most important moment that for some unexplained reason he had lost the whip-hand of Count Simon.

Up to this interview, by alternate effrontery and flattery, he had kept his place in the Count's confidence, and exerted a guiding and restraining influence over him. Now Sagan held him at arm's length, and was plainly determined to act according to his own judgment without consulting the German. The mischief had, of course, been done by the news of Elmur's engagement to Selpdorf's daughter, for Sagan, like others of his limited mental development, was sensitively suspicious. Hence the bond between the two men was weak, inasmuch as neither liked nor trusted the other, but it was strong, since both were tenacious and both had staked all the future on the chance of forcing a new regime upon Maasau the Free. At this crisis, however, Elmur would gladly have hedged or masked his position, for he knew himself to be overmuch at the mercy of the equivocal tact and discretion of his ungovernable coadjutor.

'I cannot help thinking that my presence at the outset will make Captain Colendorp shy at any proposition whatever,' said Elmur again.

'Do you want to draw back? You don't wish to appear in the matter—is that it? By St. Anthony, von Elmur, you showed me the road that has brought me to this pass and you will have to stand by me now! Also you are wrong about Colendorp. When he sees for himself that I have Germany behind me, it will decide his doubts—if he has any, which I don't expect. I have read the man. He is soured and ill-conditioned, the readiest stuff to make a rebel and a traitor of!'

What more Elmur might have urged was cut short by the entrance of Colendorp. He had left his sword outside.

He saluted Sagan in his stiff punctilious way, his dark and sallow face impenetrable.

'I am glad to see you, Captain Colendorp,' said Sagan with some constraint. Even he felt the check of the man's iron impassiveness.

'You sent for me, my lord,' returned Colendorp, as one who hints that time is short and he would be through with business.

'Take a cigar,' said the Count, pushing a box across the table, and also pouring out a generous glass of the liqueur, for the manufacture of which Maasau is famous—the golden glittering poison known as bizutte.

Colendorp accepted both in silence, but took a seat with a certain slow unwillingness that was suggestive. Colendorp was at the best unpliable. His manner put an edge on Sagan's temper. He plunged into his subject.

'Yes, I sent for you, Captain Colendorp, because I believe you to be a faithful Maasaun. You are not one of those blind optimists who say because Maasau has been swinging so long between ruin and extravagance that she must swing on so for ever. It is not possible!'

'I am sorry to hear that, my lord.'

'No, I say it is not possible. Changes must be made. In these days of big armaments and growing kingdoms, Maasau can no longer stand alone. She must secure an ally, a friend powerful enough to back her up against all comers—a great nation who will make the cause of Maasau's freedom her own, and help us to preserve the traditions of our country.'

Elmur half expected the soldier to point this speech for himself by a glance towards the representative of Germany, but Colendorp sat unresponsive and black-browed, and gave no sign.

'There is a party among us who advise us to wait until we are forced into a corner, and then to make choice of such an ally. But reasonable men know that a bargain one is driven to make must inevitably be a bad bargain. The only hope for Maasau is to move at once and to move boldly before it is too late, and while we are still in a position to choose for ourselves under the conditions which suit us best and will best conduce to the preservation of our freedom.'

Colendorp listened without any change of expression.

'What is your opinion, Captain Colendorp?' asked Sagan at last.

'The only difficulty would be to find a nation sufficiently disinterested for our purpose, my lord,' replied Colendorp deliberately.

'I have found one.' Sagan indicated Elmur, but the Guardsman still kept his gaze on the Count. 'Only one small obstacle stands in the way of carrying out our plans—the plans, recollect, of the wisest and most patriotic of our countrymen. I need not name it.'

Colendorp apparently thought for a moment.

'M. Selpdorf?' he said.

'But not at all! Selpdorf is one of the foremost of my advisers.'

Colendorp shook his head as if no other name occurred to him; Sagan bent across the table, the knotted hand on which he leaned twitching slightly.

'You do not speak, but you know the truth. And you know the—the Duke.'

Colendorp's silence was telling on Sagan's self-control.

'Yes, the Duke!' he reiterated. 'He has never given a thought to the welfare of Maasau. Its revenues are his necessity, that is all! If the ruler will not take the interests of the country into consideration, his people must supply his place. Do not misunderstand my words!' for at length a blacker frown passed over the iron face of the listener. 'My meaning is not to hurt the Duke at all; our one wish is to urge upon him the only course left for the safety of the country. To that end we must all combine. So long as his Highness believes he can depend on his Guard to back him, he will hold out against even the most reasonable demands. Therefore the Guard must be with us.'

'I am not the colonel of the Guard,' said Colendorp quietly. Sagan took this in some form as an agreement with his views, some surrender on the part of the Guardsman, and he broke out into a flood of speech.

'No, but Wallenloup! A pig-headed old fool, who would never be brought to see an inch either side of his oath of allegiance, but would rush blindly on before the Duke to his death, and to the destruction of Maasau—to anywhere! Colendorp, Ulm being away, you are the senior officer, failing Wallenloup. It is not outside the possibilities of the game that you would find yourself in command of the Guard when all was said and done. The highest ambition of a Maasaun is yours if you will promise us your help in this struggle! A struggle, mind you, not of selfish motives nor for self-aggrandisement, but for Maasau the Free!' He stuttered in his eagerness and then stood waiting for the reply.

'And if the Duke does not consent to—any—changes?' asked Colendorp coldly.

At this juncture Elmur interposed.

'The Count will ex——'

But Sagan was rushing his fences now like a vicious horse. Having once given voice to his ambitions he had no longer the power to rein in his speech.

'By your leave, Baron von Elmur, I will speak! Colendorp, you are a man to whom the world may yet give much. Your one chance is being offered to you—here—to-night. The men will follow you if you give the word, and Wallenloup, well, Wallenloup must upon that occasion absent himself. Use your influence with the other officers. They are not to be bribed, of course, but in the cause of the country each man would find his services well rewarded. Think before you answer me, man! Duke Gustave is sunk in pleasure and has sold the country over and over again to the highest bidder, and only got out of his share of the bargain by Selpdorf's infernal cleverness. This time we will play an open game. With Germany to stand by us, we have nothing to fear!'

'And if His Highness will not consent to these changes?' again demanded Colendorp.

'Then'—Elmur laid a hand on the old man's shoulder, but Sagan shook it off—'then, Captain Colendorp, he must go—to make room for another who can better fill his place! Just as Wallenloup must go to give room to another and less obstructive chief.'

Colendorp's dark eyes glared straight in front of him. Had it been Adiron—Adiron, as true a man, would have feigned agreement and blown the plot afterwards. But never Colendorp! He was narrow-minded, poor, embittered, scenting insult in every careless word, proud, loyal, desperate. Mentally his vision was limited; he could see but one thing at a time, but he saw it very large.

Sagan's treachery passed by him in that moment of mad feeling. He felt and felt only the deadly affront offered to him of all the officers of the Guard—the coarse bribe of the colonelcy dangled before his starving nose, for he alone of all the Guard had been deemed corruptible! The thought held more than the bitterness of death.

He looked from wall to wall, and knew himself an unarmed man, so he made ready to die as a soldier and a gentleman. But first he must clear his tarnished honour—tarnished with the foul proposal made to him by Count Simon of Sagan. He had passed through life a cold and, in his own sense of the word, an honourable man, disliked, feared and avoided outside his own most intimate circle. He had been driven by the irresistible destiny of character to live a lonely man, and now the strength of a lonely man was his—the strength that can make an unknown death a glory for the sake of honour, not honours. So he spoke.

'You were very good, Count Sagan, to make choice of me before all the Guard for—this!' he said in his cold voice; 'may I ask why you so favoured me?'

'Because I can read a man.'

'And you read me so? Then hear me. I take the place you have given me. I take my place as the least staunch of all the Guard. You have told me so much, unmasked so clearly what you intend to do, that, unless I fall in with your wishes, I can never hope to leave this room except feet foremost. I say this. Now see me act as the least staunch of the Guard!'

Without warning he leaped upon Sagan, hurling him backwards with the force of the sudden impact, and buried his fingers in the grey bristling beard. He had but his bare hands with which to slay the enemy of the Duke, and used them with the strength of envenomed pride. Sagan, under the iron throttling fingers snatched at his hunting-knife and stabbed fiercely upwards between the bent arms at the Guardsman's throat.

Inside the room the heavy breathing and struggling of the men on the floor seemed to Elmur loud enough to alarm the whole Castle, in spite of the furious screaming of the gale. He sprang to the writhing heap and tried to pinion Colendorp, but as he touched him the wounded man fell back. In a moment Sagan was on his feet calling on Elmur to bring the lamp. He seized Colendorp under the arm and shoved him roughly towards the wall, where throwing back a curtain he opened a door and thrust the tottering figure before him down a short flight of steps. Then another door was opened and the tsa swept in with a wild yell, for a moment holding upright the failing man who staggered out on to the snowy terrace, making a tragic centre to the flickering path of light cast by the lamp in Elmur's hand.

For an instant Colendorp stood swaying on the yielding snow by the edge of the precipice, and as he swayed his voice climbed through his broken throat—

'Maasau the Free! Long live the Duke! The Duke's man ... I ... Colendorp of ...'

The wind had lulled for a second. Again the mad blast caught and wrenched Colendorp's figure, the snow gave between his feet, and he plunged forward heavily into the gorge of the Kofn river. The broken snow, whirled up in a great cloud by the eddying gusts, shone in the lamplight for a second like a wild toss of spray, then settled again upon the narrow terrace, obliterating all marks there. A window overhead was pushed open, but already the band of light upon the snow was gone, and nothing remained for Valerie's eyes but a chaos of gloom. Yet she had seen something. Dimly through the double glass she had discerned the green and gold of the Guard on the swaying figure before it dropped away for ever into the night.



CHAPTER XVI.

'WITH YOUR LIPS TO THE HURT.'

A few minutes later a knocking came to Madame de Sagan's door. It was low and urgent. She ran to open it, her heart in her throat. A hand pushed her aside with the rough careless force of full control. She recoiled with an exclamation, for a glance showed her that the Count was in one of his most deadly moods.

'What have you done—where is Selpdorf's daughter?' he snarled.

As Madame de Sagan shrank from the menacing hand the door opened a second time, and Valerie herself stumbled in with a bloodless face.

At the sight of the Count, she drew herself together like one who faces an unexpected peril.

'I apologise for coming, but I am frightened. The storm is dreadful. So I came to you, Isolde.'

Isolde put out her arms with a sobbing cry.

'I am frightened, too,' she said with a swift resentful glance at her husband; 'I was coming for you. Stay with me, Valerie; I will not be left alone!'

Sagan looked from one to the other of the two beautiful faces, and a sensation of surprised dismay, to which he was a stranger, arose in his mind. Hitherto women had been to him possessions, not problems. Now a very ancient truth burst in upon him with all the force of a revelation. To own a woman is not always to understand her. The unexpected defiance on his wife's face confounded him.

'Isolde!' he began, stepping towards her.

But the young Countess clung to Valerie.

'Stay with me, Valerie!' she implored. 'I am far more frightened than you, for I know what there is to fear.'

With a loud curse of bewilderment he strode out, banging the door behind him. Isolde sprang to it, slipping the bolts with trembling fingers. Then she threw herself upon a couch and broke into pitiful sobbing.

Valerie stood looking down at her in an agony of suspense, yet remembering that self-control is the chief rule of every game. Presently she put her hand on Isolde's shoulder. The young Countess started up with a suppressed scream. 'I had forgotten you were there. Valerie, he will murder me! He hates me! Oh, I have no one to save me!'

Valerie looked round. After the scene she had just witnessed, this suggestion did not sound so wild as it would have done at another time.

'You are nervous, Isolde; one could fancy anything on such a night,' she said soothingly.

'Have you lived so long in Maasau without knowing that here at Sagan everything is possible? He threatens me, and oh, my God, what shall I do?'

Valerie sat down beside her and put a steady hand upon her arm. She had her own object in this visit, but it must be approached with caution.

'I am here. I will help you!' she said reassuringly.

Isolde sat up and put her arm round her companion's shoulders.

'I must trust you—though——Valerie, there is one person who might be able to help me to-night,' she whispered close to the girl's ear. 'He might save me. But he must come to me—here—now! I dare not leave this room. Simon——' she shivered.

'Who is it?' A new coldness crept into Valerie's voice as she listened.

'Can you not guess? It is Captain Rallywood.'

Valerie had braced herself to meet this, and it only added proof to her own fears for his safety. Come what might, she would undertake any message from Isolde to get the opportunity of warning the Duke's guard of the coming danger, and to tell the fate of that gallant figure tossing to and fro in the battering rush of the Kofn. She drew herself away from Isolde's embrace with a shudder.

'What is the matter with you?' Isolde peered up at her with a quick scrutiny. 'You are shaking all over. Valerie, is it because of him?'

'I am very cold,' returned the girl with a smile. 'I am quite willing to bring—Captain Rallywood. But where is he?'

'He is on guard in the Duke's ante-room.' She turned her head away.

'Then, Isolde, you know it is impossible! He cannot come!'

'Even if it costs my life?' said the Countess bitterly. 'Oh, how cheap you hold other people's lives, Valerie! You are a true Maasaun!'

Valerie thought a moment. The request of Madame de Sagan fell in with her own plan. It would enable her to solve the doubt that was agonising her; yet if she found him safe, how could she lend herself to tempt him to his own dishonour? A cruel question rose within her. Should she put him to the supreme test of life and love—would she not rather know him dead in the cold river, than living and false to her dim ideal of him?

'There is no time to spare.' Isolde's voice broke in upon her. 'If you could make him know the danger I stand in, he must come! Remind him of his promise to me.'

'But if he will not come?' Valerie forced the words.

'Then ask him to give you the cigarette case of Maasaun leather-work. That will remind him of many things. But he will come,' she ended more confidently.

Valerie rose.

'I am ready. I know the passages are watched. I saw no one, yet I felt the shadows were full of eyes. Lend me your sable cloak, Isolde; everyone will recognize that, and with this lace about my head, I shall be free to go where I please as the Countess Sagan.'

'Valerie'—Madame de Sagan held the girl back—'listen to me, you must make him come! I must tell you all. Rallywood is in danger, nothing can save him unless you separate him from the Duke——' she stopped, panting, then bared her arm. 'Remind him how he promised me—with his lips upon the hurt! Now go!'

The next second Valerie Selpdorf found herself alone in the dim corridor, in which the lights burned low. She stood quite still, the shock of the last sentence 'with his lips upon the hurt' still ringing in her ears. Rallywood! Rallywood with the clear grey eyes and that look in them which remained persistently in her memory. Her father had taught her to suspect the whole world. But she had chosen to think differently of this man, even when she told herself she hated him. Different from others—exempt from the universal stain of hypocrisy—one to be trusted, if it were possible to trust any. Then she turned upon herself. After all had he deceived her, had she not rather deceived herself? He had spoken openly to her of his despairing secret, of the woman he could never hope to win. And she had concluded what? Nothing definite, but there had been a dim thought. Oh, it was unbearable! But why did she linger to think of this, while Maasau itself was in danger?

She hurried along the passages, moving with a soft swiftness of silken garments, and as she passed the hidden eyes of the watchers looked out after the muffled figure. Madame de Sagan was free to come and go.

From the head of the great staircase a narrow corridor branched away to the Duke's quarters. A very dim light shone from the embrasure at the end as she hurried along and, before she could stop herself, she ran right into the arms of a tall man who was coming out towards her.

He put her gently back against the wall and looked at her, but the lace was drawn close about her face.

'I must pass,' she said.

The man's back was to the light, but she knew the shape of the head and shoulders.

'No one can pass, Madame.'

The relief of knowing Rallywood was safe jarred in her mind with the hideous suspicion that Isolde's allurements had after all conquered his allegiance to the Duke. He clearly recognised the cloak and believed her to be the Countess. She would have been more than woman not to take advantage of the mistake. She bent forward a little.

'Come with me,' she whispered.

'I cannot.'

'Do you forget your promise?'

'Under the circumstances'—he glanced back at the Duke's door—'you know I could make none.'

'But I am in danger—and you promised, surely you promised, with your lips there!'

Rallywood stared at the shapely hand and firm white wrist thrust out from the dark sables, with a great leap at his heart. The sight took him unawares.

'Valerie!' he exclaimed.



CHAPTER XVII.

IRIS.

From its beetling crags the Castle of Sagan looked out that night with many luminous eyes over the crowding black pine woods and away across the frost-bound, melancholy marshes of the frontier. The renewed violence of the storm had not abated, and the wind moaned about the old walls.

There was one in Sagan that night to whom the wind had an old yet new story to tell. The Duke had heard it in his cradle even in the summer palace where he was born; during later years his dulled senses paid little heed to that wild singing, and, in truth, passing most of his life as he now preferred to do in the low-lying sheltered palace at Revonde, where the state apartments were well within the towering mass of masonry, and protected on the river side by the Cloister of St. Anthony, he seldom heard its voice. So that to-night, while the tsa whimpered and clamoured about the exposed buttresses and towers of Sagan, it sounded to his ears like the calling of some long-dead friend, a wraith belonging to his lost youth. Sleeping memories awoke and troubled him; he fancied he had read a vague menace in Count Simon's bloodshot eyes, and every little incident that had taken place since his arrival now assumed strange and malign meanings.

He looked around the great vaulted chamber oppressed by a presentiment of danger, and tried to still his jangled nerves. For with the instinct of failing mastership he resolved to think out some scheme of defence and a spontaneous policy, by which he might not only defeat his enemies, but outwit and overwhelm his rebellious servants.

Selpdorf—was he also false and self-seeking? For more years than he cared to remember the Duke had forced this man to enact the part of virtual ruler of the State, always believing in his loyalty—if not to Gustave of Maasau, at least to Maasau the Free. Any dimmest doubt of Selpdorf's patriotism had never during all that period entered into the soddened brain of his master. But to-night, as the Duke recalled the half-jesting proposal to disband the Guard, made by the Chancellor on the day of the review, and added to that hint the pregnant significance of Valerie's speech, he realised that evil days were overtaking him, that his most trusted minister had been bid for and bought by his foes, and that it now behoved him to strike out a personal policy, whereby he should secure strong friends and supporters to aid him in the coming struggle against these traitors.

He had retired to his room at an early hour under the plea of weariness. He was, as a matter of fact, worn out by the flood of fears and anxieties that Valerie's one reckless sentence had let loose upon him. So long was it since he had placed these weightier matters of diplomacy and government in other hands, that the renewed sense of responsibility and the imminent need for action seemed to be crushing in his brain. But the instinct of self-preservation, backed by the one kingly attribute left him—love of his country—strengthened him to attempt a final effort to combat the overpowering odds which he felt rather than knew to be against him.

Tossed and harried by a hundred terrifying thoughts, the self-enfeebled creature broke at length into that dreadful crying, the scanty painful tears, the aching sobs, which is the weeping of age or of an exhausted constitution.

When the paroxysm was over he lay back in his bed, absolutely drained of strength and of all power to think longer. Whether he dozed or not he scarcely knew, but after an interval he seemed to awake as if from sleep with his thoughts once more under control.

Oh, that he had his Guard about him! The Guard, always reliable and full of the old grim dash and power which had been the firm foundation of the ducal throne from the beginning. Amongst their ranks was no slackening of discipline, of devotion, or of that splendid recklessness which had made them what they were—the premier Garde du Corps of Europe! In spirit he yearned once more to see their plumes and gleaming equipment come dancing down the sunny wind, and to hear the grand thunder of their charge, which but the other day he had been half-inclined to call stale and unprofitable. In this solitary hour, when the night-lamps flickered on the massive walls and the sense of loneliness grew upon him till he sickened at the unceasing cry of the pitiless wind, he realised that the Guard was the sole bulwark now as always of Maasau. He shivered down among the soft coverings and listened apprehensively.

Unziar and Rallywood with two troopers watched in the guard-room, through which lay the only approach to his sleeping chamber. Unziar, could Unziar be trusted? He had heard something of Unziar and that handsome vixen of Selpdorf's. Then Colendorp—ah, there was no doubt there! Dark and resentful, his poverty and his pride were the bye-words of the barracks; he, whatever the temptation, would never fall from honour.

There remained Rallywood. He, too, was to be depended upon, the Duke decided quickly, though for no special reason but that he had taken some vague fancy to the Englishman's bronzed face and swinging stride. Yet Simon was powerful and unscrupulous; how could this handful of men oppose him?

He sprang up in his bed as the door opened and a man stood on the threshold.

'Sire, there is treason! Colendorp has been murdered.'

'Is it you, Unziar?' The Duke's voice came strangely from his pillows. 'Send for the whole escort of the Guard from their quarters.'

'Impossible, sire! The corridors are held by Count Sagan's men. Mademoiselle Selpdorf has brought the news.'

'What! You told me not two hours ago she was engaged to von Elmur. She is the price of Selpdorf's treason.'

Unziar stepped nearer.

'Mademoiselle Selpdorf has already risked her life to warn us that we are in danger. I'd stake my soul she is loyal.'

'Good indeed, Anthony! I'd sooner have your honour than your soul. But go, in the name of the Virgin, and since the corridors are closed to the men of my Guard, send the girl for Major Counsellor. She can but die!'

Unziar saluted and hurried back to the ante-room where Valerie and Rallywood were waiting. In spite of his personal horror at the thought of her danger, he was well aware that only by Valerie's aid could they hope to reach Counsellor.

Valerie listened to the Duke's order, then wrapping the lace as before about her head turned to Rallywood. He accompanied her through the guard-room and some little way along the passage. It seemed as if he could not let her go forth on this perilous enterprise.

'For God's sake, take care of yourself!' he said. 'If anything were to happen to you.'

The prolonged excitement of events, the sense of responsibility and danger, the exaltation of such a moment must have reacted on Valerie. Whether prompted by some instinct of coquetry, or betrayed into a touch of real feeling, or perhaps moved by the knowledge that death stood close beside them both, she drew her hand from his arm and raising her face asked in her soft voice:

'Do you remember what you said to me once—on the night of the palace ball?'

He saw the deep eyes upraised to his, though their meaning in that dim place he could not be sure of, but a rush of quick memories came over him.

'Yes.'

She gave a little excited laugh.

'Then expect me!' she said. And she was gone.

When Valerie returned to Madame de Sagan half an hour later she was still white and breathless. Isolde, in a fever of impatient terror, caught her by the arm.

'Where is he? When is he coming! Valerie—'

Valerie made a supreme effort to control herself.

'He is on guard.'

'Yes, I know. I know! But he is coming!'

'It was impossible! He could not leave His Highness. Isolde, you would not wish it!'

'What does anything matter unless it's found out?' cried Isolde, giving in her adherence to a common creed. 'Did you give him all my message? Did you make him understand? Then, when all else failed, you asked him for the cigarette case? That would remind him——' Madame de Sagan spoke in growing agitation.

Valerie looked into her wild eyes.

'I forgot that,' she admitted.

Isolde shook the arm she held.

'You have killed him! Valerie, you have been jealous of me, and by your jealousy you have killed him! Had you spoken as I told you he would be here now—and safe! As it is he is lost!' she flung herself down among the cushions.

Her slender hands were clenched, her turquoise eyes stared wide and blind from her white face. She seemed to hold her breath as if waiting for the inevitable blow to fall. Valerie, greatly moved, knelt down beside her.

'What does it matter if we die to-night or a month hence?' Isolde spoke in a low voice; her heart had unconsciously been gathering up bitterness against Valerie, and she had no longer the strength to conceal it under this unbearable strain. 'Valerie, you have stooped to meanness—you who have so scorned meanness in others. You knew long ago what—Rallywood's love was to me. You have known my life, and much that I have to bear. Amongst all who pretend to love me there is not one like him, not one! He would be always kind and true. I think these are English qualities, for in another way there is Major Counsellor——' the weary voice broke off as if too tired for more.

It was well Counsellor never heard that little expression of opinion concerning himself; it might have proved the thorn in a somewhat callous diplomatic memory.

'You have betrayed me! You!' she repeated with a bitter laugh; then, springing up, she ran towards the spot where her sables lay heaped upon the floor just as Valerie had dropped them from her shoulders.

'It may be too late, but I will go myself. I will save him if I can!'

Valerie wrapped the cloak around her.

'Isolde, I will go with you.'

'You!' Isolde turned with a startling look of dislike and suspicion. 'No, I hate you, and I choose to go alone!'

Valerie drew back and Madame de Sagan passed her by and flung wide the door. As she did so a confused noise could be heard, and the two women stood listening while a distant hubbub of voices rose louder, then a pistol shot followed by others echoed down the passages.

'He is dead! By your fault!'

Isolde turned upon Valerie with a wild gesture, as if she would have struck her.

Valerie drew back.

'If you really loved him, Isolde, you would rather he was—there—with his honour—than—here—without it,' she said.



CHAPTER XVIII.

THE SWORD OF UNZIAR.

The Castle of Sagan may be roughly divided into three irregular parts. The massive old keep dominates all, standing high and black against the skyline; then the varied cluster of buildings immediately around its foot contain the principal reception and living rooms, and lowest of all the courtyards, kitchens, stables and offices. To the right of the keep a wing, curved like the fluke of an anchor, slopes down to a lower level. This portion is fairly modern and arranged for the housing of guests. The Countess's own apartments were situated at the junction of this wing with the main building, while the quarters assigned by ancient custom to the use of the reigning Duke during his visits to Sagan occupies the whole upper floor of an old and bulky annex that juts out from the base of the keep.

The passage leading to this annex branched from the head of the grand staircase. Upon the landing rows of heavily armed men were gathering noiselessly.

As Elmur and Sagan stood together waiting at the mouth of the Duke's corridor, the Count turned to his companion.

'Have you proposals ready to lay before his Highness?' he demanded.

'In form,' returned Elmur, touching his pocket.

'That is well, for you are about to present them. The Duke lies practically in my power at this moment,' Count Simon continued grimly. 'Gustave is a coward. The way to his presence lies open, and I think you will agree with me that his Highness of Maasau will consent to most things rather than look the fear of death in the eyes!'

'There must be no violence,' Elmur began.

'That shall be exactly as I choose,' Sagan swore with an oath. 'By the good God we can't afford scruples to-night!'

After a short interval he went on.

'Once we have Gustave's word, we are safe. He is too proud to own that he gave it unwillingly. Besides, so long as we win what matter the means we use? Is your conscience so ticklish, Baron?'

'Politics have their exigencies and are inevitably rigorous, my lord,' answered Elmur slowly. 'To be successful means absolution. In the political courts where our actions will be judged they make no provision for failure. Success is recognised and mercifully considered, while failure, my lord, not being in any sense public, falls to the level of ordinary crime, and is judged by the standard applied to ordinary crime. Thus you will see that I risk as much in my place as you risk in yours.' Perhaps this was as near an approach to a threat as had ever been uttered in the ears of the fierce old Count. With a violent movement, he stepped forward.

'There is no hindrance in our path that cannot be cut through with a sword, and, by my soul, if we find one I will cut it!' Then, looking round, he gave the word to advance, and entered the darkness of the corridor.

A turn brought them in sight of Unziar's tall figure, standing sword in hand on the lowest step of the flight that led up to the embrasure covering the door leading to the royal apartments.

Count Simon pushed Elmur ahead of him while he fell back to whisper a few words to the man immediately behind; then he took precedence once more.

'I request an audience of His Highness, Lieutenant Unziar,' he said.

'Certainly, my lord, if you will give me the password of the night,' replied Unziar.

Sagan's answer was the countersign he had given to his own following in the Castle.

Unziar shook his head.

'You cannot pass, my lord.'

'What—not see my guest and cousin in my own house?'

'His Highness gave orders that none should be allowed to enter without giving the countersign chosen by himself.'

Sagan considered a second or two.

'True, I had forgotten. Come here, Unziar; your trooper there has long ears; I must speak with you. Stand back, men!' he said roughly. 'Baron von Elmur, pray remain, and you, Hern,' addressing the man behind. Unziar still stood upon the step.

'Come here! I tell you, man, I must see the Duke to-night—at once,' continued Sagan approaching Unziar. 'What the devil are you afraid of?' Unziar stepped down as the Count pulled him confidentially nearer to himself and towards the narrow entry. But while the Count whispered, a hand suddenly darted over his shoulder and seized Unziar by the throat, at the same moment when a well-directed kick from Sagan, delivered cunningly behind the knees, brought the young man to the ground. He lunged at Sagan as he fell with his sword, then it was knocked from his hand as his assailants swarmed over him, but not before he had fired his revolver into Hern's body. The man fell across him, but Unziar again swinging clear rose on his elbow and sent a second shot into the face nearest him. Meantime the trooper at the door was making a gallant fight, but the odds were too great. The struggle was soon over, the trooper's dead body flung aside, and Unziar, frantic and helpless, was tied hand and foot and left upon the bloody flooring of the outer passage while the Count's people forced the door.

This was a matter of some difficulty, but it was presently accomplished. The besieging party pushed through into the guard-room, which seemed brilliantly lit in comparison with the gloom outside.

Most of the furniture and the screen had been utilised by Rallywood to make a barricade in front of the Duke's ante-room. A single trooper with his musket levelled knelt behind it.

Sagan, who held a handkerchief to his cheek, spoke loudly.

'Do you see who I am? Clear the way!'

At this Rallywood stepped into view from behind the screen.

'The man acts under orders from his Highness, my lord,' he said.

Sagan stared at Rallywood with haughty scorn.

'It is of the utmost importance that I should see his Highness at once. Inform his Highness that I urgently beg to be granted an interview.'

'With pleasure, my lord,' returned Rallywood formally, 'if you will be good enough to give me the password, without which it is quite impossible for anyone to have an audience to-night. Our orders were very distinct on that point.'

'His Highness could not foresee that I'—the Count dwelt upon the pronoun imperiously—'should desire one. Stand back, Captain Rallywood! I must pass and am willing to take the responsibility.'

'It is quite impossible, my lord,' repeated Rallywood without moving.

'You force me to extreme measures,' cried Sagan. 'Remove this man,' he ordered, 'as quietly as may be. We must not alarm his Highness.'

There was a clatter of arms as Sagan's followers advanced. The foremost of them ran in upon Rallywood, the swords met, Rallywood's sleeve was ripped from wrist to elbow, but his sword blade passed through his opponent's shoulder. The man sank down in a sitting posture, coughing oddly; his head dropped forward.

'Shoot them down!' shouted Sagan, but the words were still on his lips when the door behind John Rallywood slowly opened and a figure stood beside him.

Its appearance checked the rising struggle, for the figure was the figure of the Grand Duke of Maasau. He was wrapped in his hooded robe of green velvet, and the five points of the golden star of Maasau blazed upon his breast.

'Cousin, I would speak with you, but these fools stopped me,' exclaimed Sagan.

The Duke turned his shadowed face and spoke to Rallywood in a low voice.

'His Highness begs you, my lord, to withdraw your men,' said Rallywood aloud.

Sagan, scowling, ordered his men to the further end of the long room. Meantime Rallywood, with evident unwillingness, pulled away a portion of the barricade. Through this the Duke advanced with a stately deliberation, and walked slowly up to the Count.

With a sudden hoarse shout of triumph Sagan flung his great arms about the Duke's body.

'By St. Anthony, Gustave, no one shall stop our conversation now!'

The Duke made no attempt to release himself from the rough hug that held him prisoner. He merely raised his hood with one hand, so that Sagan, his coarse mouth still wide in laughter, could stare into the countenance not four inches from his own.

Consternation and fury swept over the Count's features. From under the hood a red challenging face, a big white moustache, and shaggy-browed humorous eyes met his gaze. The sight held him gaping. But only for a second. Then he whipped out his pistol.

'An English plot, by Heaven!'

But Rallywood was quicker still. A sharp knock on the Count's wrist sent the bullet into the ceiling.

'Have a care, my lord,' Counsellor said authoritatively. 'You cannot do as you will even in this lonely and remote room in your lonely Castle of Sagan, since England and—' with a bow towards Elmur—'Germany are looking on.'

Sagan still threatened Counsellor with the revolver.

'Can you see any reason why I should not kill you as a traitor to my country at this moment, Major Counsellor?' he shouted.

'Only one, my lord. Russia also, in the person of M. Blivinski, knows where I am, and is awaiting my return to arrange for our journey to Revonde—which we propose to make in each other's company,' replied Counsellor pointedly.

Sagan burst into his habitual storm of curses.

'Your nation have well been called perfidious, Major Counsellor. A stab in the back——'

'Why no, my lord,' said Counsellor; 'our greatest vice is admittedly that we are always well in front!'

'Come, Baron, have you nothing to say to this?' Sagan asked, ready to spring at his friends in his torment of baffled rage.

'Nothing, my lord. You will remember I am here to-night entirely at your request.'

Sagan's laugh was not altogether a pleasant one.

'Put it how you like, Monsieur, I should not have been here either but for you!'

Elmur stood with folded arms. To stoop to recriminations before the common enemy! The cause was lost for the moment, but there was the future, and in that future the fool who figured as his ally should become his slave! Germany had, after all, gained something in gaining the knowledge of British designs afoot.

'Then his Highness refuses to see me, although he can give audience to—you?' the Count at length broke the silence.

'On the contrary, my lord, he looks forward to the pleasure of meeting you to-morrow. That is the message with which I am charged. Captain Rallywood, his Highness wishes Lieutenant Unziar to attend him.'

Count Simon made a sign to his men, and a moment later Unziar stalked into the room, maddened by the outrage put upon him.

'My sword, Count Sagan,' he said huskily.

'Your sword! Is it lost?' returned the Count with an angry sneer. 'In my day it was not the custom of the guard to lose their swords!'

'When I saw it last it was sticking in your cheek, my lord,' said the young man with a studied insolence, pointing to a bleeding cut on the Count's face.

One of the men, coming forward, laid the sword upon the top of the barricade. Unziar grasped it and thrust it back into the scabbard.

'It was lost by treachery!' he flung out. 'And I leave it to these gentlemen to say where the shame lies!'

With that he leaped the barricade and passed into the Duke's room.



CHAPTER XIX.

IN DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS.

It was late on the following morning before the Castle was awake. It almost seemed as if the guests had waited for the appearance of the reassuring daylight before they ventured from their rooms. Four huge fires roared in the four great chimneys round the vast hall where the breakfast was in progress.

Sagan, in his weather-stained hunting suit and leggings, stood at the upper window overlooking the courtyard where the huntsmen and gaunt dogs, the famous Sagan boarhounds, were already collected, in anticipation of the boar-hunt arranged to take place on that day. The sky had cleared, but the tsa raged and howled after its perennial custom about the Castle.

Madame de Sagan, entering later, cast a nervous glance at the grim red face and bull-neck, and then fell into a laughing conversation with the people round her, although her heart felt cold. She was far from being a brave woman, although she joined so gaily in the merry talk passing from side to side; but her marvellous self-control was no more than the self-control common to women of her social standing. It is secondary strength, not innate but acquired, of which the finest instance is a matter of history, and was witnessed within the walls of the Conciergerie during the Reign of Terror, where men and women unflinchingly carried on a hollow semblance of the joyous comedy of life till they mounted laughing into the tumbrils.

Although nothing was known about the events of the previous night except by those who took part in them, a sense of excitement pervaded the party. The strained relations existing between the Duke and his possible successor gave rise to an amount of vague expectation and conjecture. Anything might happen with such dangerous elements present in the atmosphere.

Therefore when Rallywood, booted and spurred, passed up the hall, his entrance attracted every eye. He walked straight up to the Count at his distant window and saluting, spoke for perhaps a minute in a low voice.

At the first sentence Sagan swung round, his lowering face growing darker as he listened. Then, advancing to the head of the table prepared for the entertainment of the Duke, he called the attention of all present by striking it loudly with the riding-whip he carried.

An instant hush settled upon the room. Sagan glared round with waiting eyes, and in the pause the tsa broke in a crash upon the Castle front with the pebble-shifting sound of a breaker.

'I have to beg the favour of your attention for a moment,' the Count's words rang out. 'Captain Rallywood reports that an officer of his Highness's Guard is missing—Captain Colendorp. Inquiries have been made but he cannot be found. It seems that he was last seen leaving the billiard-room. If anyone in the hall can give us further information, will they be good enough to do so?'

Valerie raised her eyes to Rallywood, who stood behind the Count. As he met them the young man's stern face softened suddenly.

M. Blivinski, who happened to be sitting beside her, caught the exchange of looks, and for a moment was puzzled. Selpdorf's daughter? Well, well, the English are a wonderful people, he said to himself. Neither subtle nor gifted, but lucky. Lucky enough to give the devil odds and beat him! Here was Selpdorf laying his plans deeply and with consummate skill, while this pretty clever daughter of his was ready to give him away because a heavy dragoon of the favoured race smiled at her across a breakfast table. Pah! The ways of Providence are inscrutable; it remains for mortal men to do what they may to turn them into more convenient channels.

Then there was Counsellor, whose political importance could not be denied. Yet he did the bluff thing bluffly and said the obvious thing obviously, and blundered on from one great city to another, but blundered triumphantly! Still there were compensations. The good God had given the Russian craft and a silent tongue, and a facility for telling a lie seasonably.

Elmur was by a fraction of a second too late to see what the Russian had seen. Valerie was very white, but she was talking indifferently to M. Blivinski with her eyes fixed upon her plate. It was some time before she seemed to grow conscious of Elmur's gaze; a slight fleck of colour showed and paled in her cheeks, and then at length her long lashes fluttered up and the German perceived in the darkness of her eyes a trace of unshed tears.

'Mademoiselle, you are tired,' he said with solicitude.

'Yes,' she answered smiling. 'But we are going back to Revonde in a day or two, and then I will wipe out the remembrance of everything that has happened at Sagan from my mind forever!'

Elmur was about to reply when Sagan spoke again.

'No one appears to have heard or seen anything of Captain Colendorp. We will have the dogs out, Captain Rallywood. Pray tell his Highness that in the course of an hour or two we hope to be able to tell him where our man has got to. His absence is doubtless due to some trifling cause.'

As Rallywood retired Sagan cast a comprehensive glance around the tables, and noted Counsellor's absence with a sinister satisfaction.

All the morning he had been speculating upon the course Counsellor would pursue after the rencontre of the previous night. Most likely disappear from the Castle. He would not dare to brazen it out. Sagan argued that the British envoy could not be very sure of his position yet. What had he proposed to the Duke? And how had the Duke answered him? What was to be the result of the visit, or would there be any? Selpdorf held the Duke's confidence. He must checkmate England and openly throw his influence into the German scale. No half courses could any longer avail in Maasau.

Here his reflections were interrupted, for Counsellor's big burly figure was bending over Madame de Sagan's chair, before he accepted the seat at her side with the assured manner of a favored guest.

Even the Russian attache blinked. Ah, these islanders! What next?

As an immediate result Count Sagan was forced to accept the situation thrust upon him.

'Have you slept well, Major?' he inquired sardonically. 'No bad dreams, eh?'

'I dream seldom—and I make it a point in the morning to forget bad dreams if I have had any,' replied Counsellor, with a good-humored raising of his big eyebrows.

'That is wise,' said Sagan, 'for dreams and schemes of the night rarely have solid foundations.'

'So they say, my lord, but I do not trouble myself about these things. A man of my age is forced to consecrate his best energies to his digestion.'

The Duke had decided upon returning to Revonde during the forenoon, but most of the guests were to remain for the projected boar-hunt. The hunting-party had already started when Blivinski and Counsellor drove out of the Castle courtyard on their way to the nearest railway station, which lay under the mountains some miles away.

The tsa had blown the snow into heavy drifts, leaving the roads and other exposed places bare and almost clean-swept. Near the station they passed a squadron of the Guard sent by Wallenloup to escort the Duke back to the capital.

The pair in the carriage talked little, but when the jingling of accoutrements had died away Blivinski said in an emotionless tone:

'You met with Count Sagan last night then—in your dreams?'

'Yes, or Duke Gustave would have been over the border by this morning.'

'Ah!'

'And history goes to prove that reigning sovereigns are fragile ware—they cannot be borrowed without danger.'

'You allude to Bulgaria?' Blivinski asked promptly, with an air of genial interest.

'Why, for the sake of argument, Alexander can stand as a case in point.'

'If—I say if—we borrowed him, we also returned him.'

Counsellor's reply was characteristic, and justified his companion's opinion of his race.

'Damaged—so they say.'

Blivinski considered the dreary landscape.

'We must not believe all we hear. In diplomatic relations, my friend, ethics cease to exist. Diplomacy is after all a simple game—even elementary—a magnificent beggar-my-neighbour which we continue to play into eternity.'

'But there are rules ... even in beggar-my-neighbour,' said the Counsellor.

Blivinski kicked the rug softly from his feet as the carriage drew up.

'One rule, only one,' he remarked; 'Britain loves to feign the Pharisee. We smile—we others—because we understand that her rule and ours is after all the same—self-interest.'

'If that be the case we come back to the law of the Beast,' said the Counsellor.

The Russian put his gloved hand upon the open door and looked back over his shoulder at Counsellor.

'Always, my dear friend, by very many turnings—but always.'



CHAPTER XX.

UNDER THE PINES.

It was a day that would be dark an hour before its time. Rallywood rode out under the gate of the Castle of Sagan as the last trooper clattered down the rocky roadway in the rear of the Duke's carriage, for upon the arrival of the squadron from Revonde he had received orders to remain behind, the search for Colendorp having so far proved unsuccessful.

Rallywood rode slowly down the shoulder of the mountain spur. Under the gray light of the afternoon the limitless swamps stretching to the skyline looked cold and naked under their drifted snow. From the sky big with storm overhead, to the scanty grass that showed by the wayside blackened by the rigours of the winter, the whole aspect of the frontier was ominous and forbidding. Before he plunged into the lower ravines Rallywood turned to look back at the angry towers of Sagan. He was thinking of Colendorp. Under their shadow that lonely and reckless life had come to its close. Why or by whose hand might never be made clear, but Rallywood's mind had worked down to the conviction that the Count might be able to tell the story.

Well, it was good to know that Colendorp had not died in vain; indirectly but none the less surely his death had brought about the defeat of Sagan's plot.

Then he rode away into the heart of the winter woods, where the branches groaned and thrashed under the driving wind. Through gloomy and pine-choked gorges he wound his way to the riverside, for he had decided that if Colendorp had met his death in the river, his body would in time be beached near Kofn Ford.

The sodden dreary paths beside the river, familiar as they were to Rallywood, now looked strange to him. He seemed to be revisiting them after a long absence. Had they worn the same menace in the past? How had he endured to ride for those six heavy years under the hills and up and down through the marshes by the black river, one day like the last, without a purpose or an interest beyond the action of the hour? He lifted his head to the gathering storm, thanking Heaven that phase of life, or rather that long stagnation, could never come again!

The horrible emptiness of the place appalled him. Only a few block-houses dotted the miles of waste. In summer, when the pools yellowed over with flowering plants, rare wood-pigeons eked out a scanty subsistence in the thickets, and there was little else the seasons round. Only the patrols, and the trains and the smugglers, with a boar or two in the forests beside the Kofn, and the ragged wolf-packs that go howling by the guard-houses at the first powdering of snow. From the past his mind naturally ran on to thoughts of Valerie—thoughts that were hopeless and happy at the same time. He could never win her, yet those few dim moments in the corridor were his own, and whatever the future brought to her, would she ever quite forget them?

Presently as he rode along he came in sight of the block-house by the Ford from which he had gone out to Revonde to meet her—gone unknowingly! It lay in the dip about a mile ahead. If he were to return to-morrow to the narrow quarters he had occupied for so many months, the very memory of her would glorify the wooden walls, and even the old barren monotony of life with the frontier patrol be chequered and cheered by the knowledge that somewhere under the same skies Valerie Selpdorf lived and smiled.

The beggars of love—such as Rallywood—are apt to believe that in the mere fact of owning remembrance, they own wealth which can never be expended. But the day comes soon when we know ourselves poor indeed—when we find the comfort of memory wearing thin, when the soul aches for a presence beyond reach of the hands, for a voice grown too dear to forget, that must for ever escape our ears. Eheu! the bitter lesson of vain desire.

Between Rallywood and the Ford the Kofn widened out into a big bay-like reach, upon the further shore of which the trees gathered thickly, their bare branches overhanging the water. On the nearer side ragged-headed pines stood in sparse groups, and amongst their lofty upright stems Rallywood presently became aware that a strange scene was in progress.

A small party of people were moving about the low-lying ground where the snow still rested. On that bleak site at the foot of an outstanding pine two or three men with picks and shovels were hurriedly digging in the frost-bound earth. Close beside them what looked like a long military cloak flung at full length lay upon the ground.

The meaning of the incident was manifest. The clouding sky, the river, the broken pine trees were looking on at a lonely funeral, darkened by a suggestive furtiveness and haste.

Rallywood put spurs to his horse and galloped down towards the burial party. Another rider coming at speed across the open sheered off to intercept him. It was easy to recognise Sagan by his bulk and the imperious gesture of the hand with which he signed to the younger man to stop. But Rallywood rode the harder. There was a shout from Sagan, and the men ran towards the black object on the snow, and by the time Rallywood reached them the dead body was already laid in its grave.

At the same moment Sagan on the other side of the grave pulled up his big horse on its haunches. The foresters stood rigid, waiting on the Count's wishes. He looked over their heads at Rallywood.

'Colendorp has been found,' he said with his most surly bearing.

Rallywood glanced down into the shallow grave; a lump of frosty earth slipped from the rugged heap above and settled into a crevice of the cloak that covered Colendorp.

'My men are burying him.'

'By your orders, my lord?'

'By my orders. Can you suggest a better use to make of a dead man?'

'No, my lord, but a better manner of burial.'

'Dismount and see for yourself.'

Rallywood swung off the saddle, and giving his horse to one of the foresters stooped and threw back the covering from the dead man's face and breast. His dead fierce eyes stared upward, his wet hair was already frozen to his brow, and a black wound gaped open at his throat. Rallywood gazed at the harsh features, which, but for their livid colour, were little altered by death. The tsa moaned across the river and a few large flakes of snow came floating down.

'Are you satisfied now?'

Rallywood stood up and faced the Count.

'How did he die?'

'You can see that. Suicide as plain as a knife can write it.'

'I do not think so,' said Rallywood slowly.

The Count's horse plunged under the punishing spurs.

'Captain Rallywood, may I ask what you hope to gain by making a scandal in the Guard?' he asked.

'Justice, perhaps. Colendorp had no reason to take his life, my lord.'

'You will not find many to agree with you. The man was always ill-conditioned. He had debts and the pride of the devil. His affairs came to an impossible pass, I conclude. In any case a man has a right to his own secrets.'

'Yes, his affairs came to an impossible pass, perhaps. For the rest, this seems to me less like Colendorp's secret than the secret of some other man.' Rallywood met the red eye full of smouldering wrath. 'Pardon me, my lord, but in the name of the Guard, I protest against burial of Captain Colendorp in this place.'