The wheel spun. The ball clicked slower and slower. The gaming spirit of the devotees once more claimed them and the veiled lady and her chivalrous escort were forgotten in the interest centered on the little ivory sphere.

Slower and slower and slower it ran, until it settled in place with a last click.

The company drew a mingled long breath. The monotonous sing-song voice of the croupier chanted, "Twenty-six and the black wins," and he raked away the stake from before the veiled lady.

Paul's face never changed, nor did the lady speak. Once more the gold was piled, and once more raked away. The other players, forgetting the strange entrance of the lady's champion, were now absorbed in following his failing fortune.

Again and again Paul lost, until finally the last of the generous pile was swept away. With a truly stoical British smile Paul reached for his cheque book, and glanced about him for some one who possibly could identify him. But the lady rose from the table with a little gasp and steadied herself with her hands on the back of her chair.

At the same moment the door by which Paul had entered opened again, and in there came two gentlemen in evening dress. A third man followed closely behind them, and a flush of irritation crept up the back of Paul's neck as he recognized Schwartzberger.

The room was quite hushed. The men about the table had been awed by the vast sum of money which the mysterious lady had staked and lost.

As she moved a step forward as though to go, they drew aside to give her free passage, so that now she found herself face to face with the men who had just entered.

Looking over her head, Paul saw the pork-packer glance quickly at him, his face a complete study in astonishment. He bowed to the lady, but said nothing. It was Paul who spoke.

"This is most unfortunate," he said.

"What do you mean?" asked the lady.

"Your loss," said Paul hastily. "This is no fit place for you to remain in. Allow me to show you the way out at once."

He thrust himself between her and the two men who had entered, whereupon Schwartzberger burst forth in an angry voice that was perfectly audible to all.

"You damned British hypocrite!" he roared. His face was purple and he seemed suddenly to become inarticulate with rage.

Paul pushed the baize-covered door open and first bowed the lady out.

"Mademoiselle," he said, in a formal voice, "you will greatly oblige me by stepping to the other end of the passage. I have something to say to these gentlemen."

Making a little inclination with her head, the lady walked slowly away, leaving Paul to confront Schwartzberger. And Paul by no means minced matters.

"Pardon me," he said, facing about once more, "but your assistance is not required. You will be kind enough to call on me at the Hotel Metropole to-morrow morning, when I shall ask you for an explanation. Till then I have no further need of you." And he turned and passed through the door, leaving the man once more speechless.

With a few steps Paul reached the lady, who was waiting for him. As he approached she turned to him, lifting the heavy veil which had hid her features, and then, leaning toward her in the subdued light of the passage-way, Paul gazed with amazement into the face of—the Comtesse de Boistelle.



CHAPTER XII

There come times in every one's life when explanations, even if one might give them, are useless. And Sir Paul Verdayne realized that fact to its fullest when he faced the quasi Countess in the Casino vestibule.

What unhappy inspiration had caused her to dress herself in a manner almost identical with that in which Mademoiselle Vseslavitch had appeared at Lucerne? Mentally, Paul roundly damned a score of times the imitative instinct of the sex. He could not forgive himself for having mistaken a person of the Comtesse's stamp for the lady whom he had sought.

But there the Comtesse stood. And Paul was conscious that in the glance she bent on him there was more than amazement at his Quixotic replenishing of her vanished fortunes. In the excitement of the losing play, she had no thought of the motive which might have prompted Paul's act. Now that it was done, she had instantly decided, after the manner of her kind, that it was a tremendous bid for her favour. And the unconcern with which such a sum had been placed at her disposal appealed to just such a temperament as hers.

The Comtesse de Boistelle was not one to place too low a value upon her own attractiveness. The attentions lavished on her by her porcine American admirer had lacked the artistic touch of this coup of the English nobleman, and she was willing to capitulate on the spot in favour of the latter.

All this—and more—Paul read in the warm, admiring glance of the Comtesse which met his astonished gaze. The horrible futility of any attempt at explanation struck a chill to his heart, and started the perspiration on his forehead. Flight, ignominious flight, seemed the only escape, and yet at this, the sturdy British spirit of Sir Paul rebelled. A flash of inspiration—a memory from his school-days, came to mind, as he groped for a plan, in the line from Virgil, "In the middle way lies safety."

With a bow whose courtesy was irreproachable, Paul spoke first:

"Permit me to send you to your hotel, fair partner of a losing venture." He smiled grimly at the unconscious truth in his chance phrase. "To-morrow may give me the great pleasure of a further acquaintance—and under less depressing circumstances."

Then, before the Comtesse could quite marshal her vocabulary to reply in a fitting manner, Paul had bowed her through the great entrance; the door of the carriage shut, and she was driven away.

* * * * *

The uncomfortable sense of having made a thorough-going ass of himself was not conducive to sound slumber on the part of Sir Paul that night. Nor did it aid in preserving his temper during the unpleasant scene the following morning when Schwartzberger, still furious with rage, called at the hotel.

It was a relief, however, to Paul to have some object on which to vent his pent-up feelings, and if the pork-packer did not quite understand all that he said, Paul at least left no mistake in Schwartzberger's mind as to the total lack of grounds for the latter's jealousy, and filled him with a proper awe of the wrath of an Englishman once aroused.

Paul realized that by the time she met Schwartzberger, if not before, the Comtesse would discover the veiled emphasis on mere probability in his parting suggestion as to any future meeting. So he was not surprised to see the tonneau of the big green motor car with its customary occupants whirling past him as he drove to the station that afternoon.

Well! the unbelievable faux pas which he had committed—thanks to chance and his own imbecility—had turned him from his search. He no longer had the heart to linger about Nice peering into strange ladies' faces. The Lord only knew what blunder he would make next if he continued to look for her there!



CHAPTER XIII

When Paul stepped down from a railway-carriage in the Gare de l'Est in Paris two days later, his language had improved slightly. But he was still cursing himself for a consummate ass.

Baxter, who had received instructions to meet him, relieved him of his travelling bag, and a taximeter cab, whisking him quickly to the Place Vendome, soon deposited him at the Hotel du Rhin.

As for the Russian lady, Paul was a bit discouraged over the adventure. Langres and Paris were two entirely different places. What chance had he of finding her here?

He confessed to himself that it was not a promising undertaking, yet sooner or later everyone came to Paris. Here he was, and here would he stay, for a time at least. Perhaps,—who knew?—he might find her more easily than he dared hope. And from his apartments he looked out over the tree-tops.

The sight of miles and miles of chimney pots were not at all reassuring.

"Well! I'll never find her, mooning away up here," he thought. "I'll go down to dinner—and then for a plan of action."

That night he went to the theatre, but his thoughts were not for the elegantly gowned daughters of respectable bourgeoises who disported themselves for his amusement. What if they did play the parts of grand duchesses better than those great ladies themselves know how? Only one woman on earth interested Paul. And—confound his luck!—he did not know where in this great town he could find her.

Our Paul was not in a particularly pleasant frame of mind when he strolled out upon the pavement—not waiting even for the piece to end.

Another hour spent at a boulevard table impressed him as the height of stupidity. He chafed under the enforced inaction of the situation. "How many more wasted hours must he endure?" he asked himself.

He saw them slowly stretching out before him—days into months—months into years—years into eternity. Ah! God! that must not be!

* * * * *

And while Paul was wondering, speculating over what seemed well-nigh impossible, the lights of the Dalmatian Embassy in the Faubourg St. Germain gleamed brightly out upon the asphalt pavement.

In a sitting room on one of the upper floors sat Natalie Vseslavitch and the wife of the Ambassador. The guests of the evening had gone, and they were having one of those little, intimate ante-retiring chats so dear to the hearts of all women.

"Now, my dear," the elder lady was saying, "I insist that it is high time you were married. It is ridiculous for a charming girl like you to take the stand you have. Let me see—you're thirty now—and not a single man will you encourage—scarcely tolerate—except a few grey-beards like my own good husband."

Natalie feigned gay laughter, though a bitter pang shot through her heart at the unconscious stab of the good Countess.

"Just because you fell in love," she replied, "you expect me to do the same at will. I repeat to you, as to all the rest, I would not give a kopeck for any man I have ever met. Pouf! they do not interest me. Look! my adored one, I warn you that I shall prove a most intractable guest if you attempt to inveigle me into any alliance. Ah! you look guilty already! You see, I know you of old, you dear maker of marriages!"

The Countess reddened slightly at the charge, but laughed away her momentary embarrassment. It was true her interest in her young companion had led her to manage rencontres with various eligibles of the Countess's acquaintance, and she had already in mind two or three new possibilities—men prominent in the younger diplomatic set.

"Ah, well! you pretty little incorrigible!" the Countess sighed, "some day you will thank your dear old friend for sheltering you under the wings of her experience."

And thus they said good-night affectionately and parted—Madame to plan some new way of entrapping her charming friend into matrimony; Natalie to fall into a deep study as she prepared for the night.

The subject of her thoughts, she felt sure, could no longer be in Langres. Fortunately, one can shift his thought-scenes around the world in a twinkling. Paul, on the other hand, had spent some seven dragging hours on his journey to Paris.

The next morning as she glanced over the columns of the Matin, the Countess exclaimed:

"Voila! Sir Paul Verdayne is at the Hotel du Rhin. You are too young to have known him, my dear. Those sad years you were fortunately away at the Convent." And the kind-hearted old lady's eyes filled at the remembrance of Paul's sad story. "A charming man, truly. I shall send him a note at once, asking him to dine with us to-night—we need one more, and he is the very person. It is some years since I have seen him, but in London he came often to the Embassy."

The elder lady did not perceive the somewhat startled look on the face of Mademoiselle Vseslavitch.

"I shall have him take you in to dinner, my dear," she continued. "He is most charming company when he wishes to be, I assure you."

"Oh, Countess, no!" the young woman cried. "Let some one else have your wonderful Englishman. Good old Baron Lancret will amuse me sufficiently, my dear."

"Ah, but no. The dear soul has grown quite deaf since you last saw him. I can not think of allowing it. Be a good child now. This is no plot. Sir Paul is an incurable misogynist—the only man I know who would not fall in love with you. See! your old friend is doing her best to provide you with an ideal dinner-partner. What more could you wish? It is settled."

And a servant was promptly dispatched to the Hotel du Rhin.

* * * * *

"Do the Count and myself the favor to dine with us this evening," Paul read when he opened the note. "You will not have forgotten your old friends of a half-dozen years ago? We shall be charmed to see you again—and I shall expect you without fail."

Well, he had no engagement for that night—and Paul sent back a polite note of acceptance. He remembered many pleasant functions that he had attended in years past at the Dalmatian Embassy in London. After all, he had to do something. He could not go about searching for the vanished lady every moment of the day and night. That much distraction, at least, he would allow himself.

It was now eleven o'clock. He would wait until dejeuner was over, and then he would go out somewhere—anywhere—so long as there were moving crowds of people to furnish some chance of his meeting her again. Next time, without fail, he would manage a conversation.

That afternoon then he stepped out of the hotel and engaged a fiacre—a taximeter would be of no use, Paul thought. Tearing through the streets at break-neck speed annihilated distance rather than time. He told the driver to take him anywhere he pleased, and leaned back listlessly as he was piloted slowly through the avenues.

Paris, beautiful Paris, always intoxicated Paul. He had not cared for it when he was younger. But in those days he was less cosmopolitan than now. Our insular John Bull sees nothing outside our own tight little island. But to Paul an awakening had come. Since those wonderful weeks he had known in Switzerland and Venice—now long years ago—he had looked out upon the world with different eyes. The pulsating life of the streets quickened his own blood.

"To the Bois de Boulogne!" he directed the cocher, finally, and soon they swung into the gay stream that flowed down the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne toward the most wonderful pleasure ground in the world.



CHAPTER XIV

Paul found the Bois as beautiful as ever, with its lakes and rippling streams hidden away in the forests. But he was conscious of a feeling of solitude as he rode along among the hundreds upon hundreds of jangling equipages.

All the world was there it seemed to Paul. Grande dames there were, with gorgeous footmen on the box; and elegant little victorias containing wonderfully gowned demoiselles. Paul recognized one of the latter as a lady who had caused the disruption of a kingdom. There were less conspicuous carriages, too, whose occupants seemed to be having the best time of all—whole families, there, with father and mother and laughing children.

Suppose the lady were somewhere in that wonderful throng of pleasure-seekers? In what fashion would she drive abroad?

"God knows," he muttered hoarsely to himself, "who or what she may be. Princess or lady's maid, I must find her."

So he rode on through the limitless Bois, that wonderful wilderness of green trees and country pleasures, of fetes and promenades.

At last they turned into the Route de Suresnes, which soon led them to the Lac Superieur. There Paul dismissed his cocher, for he had a fancy to stroll along the borders of the lake.

The banks were alive with boys and girls running about like young savages, to the distraction of their nurses. Paul threaded his way among them contentedly, for he loved children and had all too little opportunity to be with them. He stood for a time and watched with much amusement a game of blind-man's-buff—colin-maillard the little beggars called it, but if the name was different, the play was the same that Paul had known in his own boyhood at Verdayne Place.

Many fine ships were sailing along the lake's shore, navigated by brave mariners of eight and ten. Paul had just turned away from watching one spirited race when a scream arrested his attention. At first he saw only an excited group gathered at the lake's edge, and then his eye caught sight of a tell-tale hat, floating on the surface. With a few bounds he was in the water, to emerge soon with a little limp body in his arms. He laid his burden down gently on the pebbly bank and then gave place to a man who pushed his way through the crowd with the brisk professional air a doctor is wont to assume. In a few moments the sturdy enfant breathed again.

Paul felt anything but a hero. He had never been wetter—and moreover he had lost his hat. It would be a wonder, too, if any cocher would let him get into his carriage with the water running off him in rivulets.

He was standing by the road-side bargaining with one of that tribe and had nearly exhausted his stock of dignified French when he happened to glance over his shoulder as a carriage passed close by him. Beneath a parasol a lady's face stood out clearly from the moving maze around him—her face again.

The smile in her eyes made Paul mad.

He thrust a twenty-franc note into the hand of the astonished cocher, and springing into the cab directed the man to hurry on.

And then the impossibility of the situation dawned upon him. A fine sight he was! to go dashing off the Lord knew where after a lady he did not know! Such an adventure attempted by as bedraggled a cavalier as he, might easily land him in a police station. He had no relish for being dragged off by a gendarme, he reflected, and even if that should not occur, the best he could possibly manage would be to make an ass of himself. And he had been far too successful in that line once before.

With the thought, his customary sober judgment returned.

"L'Hotel du Rhin!" he shouted savagely to his cocher, and with one last glance at the back of the carriage ahead (if it were only an automobile!—then there'd be a number on it! he thought) Paul was turned sharply around and carried toward the main entrance to the Bois.

* * * * *

Even some hours later, when he was ready to start for the Dalmatian Embassy, his rage had not cooled greatly; it was therefore in a tone strangely at variance with his unruffled evening dress that he directed his chauffeur. As for Baxter, he had never seen his master in so villainous a humour. Indeed, had it not been for an uncommonly pretty femme de chambre in the hotel, whose acquaintance he had made the evening before, he would have been tempted to give his employer notice.

"His langwidge was somethink dreadful!" he confided to her after Paul had gone.

The pleasant ride through the Faubourg St. Germain served to mollify Paul somewhat; and when he walked up to the brilliantly lighted entrance, where a resplendent flunky opened the massive doors for him, he was more himself again. He was soon greeting his host and hostess, whose genuine pleasure at seeing him once more was so evident that the last vestige of Paul's ill-humour vanished before their welcoming smiles.

Presently the Countess turned to Paul and said:

"Come! I want to present you to a young Russian friend of mine whom you are to take in to dinner," and taking his arm she led him into an adjoining room.

And there Paul met his vision, face to face; the lady of his quest.



CHAPTER XV

At first Paul could hardly believe his senses. He was conscious, as he gazed into the depths of two marvellous eyes, of a tall supple figure all in black, a crimson rose in her dark hair lending a touch of color—that, and her red lips.

This was the face that had burned its lineaments into the tablets of his memory—the face so sweetly known at Lake Lucerne.

The babble of the arriving guests—the strains of the orchestra—became as the faint murmurs of a far off sea.

For Paul, one fact, and only one, existed—it was she—his Lady of the Beauteous Countenance; no vision, but a bewitching creature of flesh and blood whose gloved hand rested for a moment in his own.

As in a dream Paul heard the lady's name—the same that he had learned at Lucerne—and he felt himself murmuring something—what the words were he scarcely knew.

Not by so much as the quiver of an eyelash did Mademoiselle give sign of recognition, or memory of any previous meeting. She merely smiled as she told Paul that her old friend the Countess had often spoken of him.

His heart was athrob with curious emotions, when he heard the Countess' voice:

"Come! we are going in. You two can become better acquainted at table." And he felt his partner's arm rest lightly within his; its merest touch electrified him.

"Damn the dinner!" Paul swore softly to himself, for he had no wish to share his good fortune with a roomful of people.

To his great disgust, a silly ass of a young German attache, who sat on the other side of Mademoiselle Vseslavitch, began talking with her as soon as they had reached their places.

When Paul did have her to himself occasionally, she talked to him of England, the last subject he was interested in then. Not for a minute did she allow him an opportunity to lead her in the direction of Langres or Lucerne.

"I have never been across the Channel," she told him. "But I have long wished to go. You English are such a remarkable people—you are all so sane and sensible compared with my own countrymen. What Russian can talk with a woman for five minutes without making violent love to her?—but you cold-blooded Anglo-Saxons are so refreshingly different."

Paul did not see the mischievous merriment in the lady's eyes. And his gallant answer was interrupted by some inanity from Herr von Mark.

If ever the Anglo-German diplomatic relations were in danger, an observer would have promptly decided that they were at that instant. That the conceited young German did not immediately expire was only due to the fact that dagger glances cannot cause a fatal wound.

Paul tried to learn more about the lady. Was she to be long in Paris? Really, she could not say. She liked the country so much more than the town that it was always hard for her to stay many days away from the open. She never knew when the whim might seize her to go—to get aboard a train and hurry to some distant spot which she felt impelled to visit. Who knew? To-morrow, perhaps, might find her on her way to the chateau of a friend who lived in the Bukowina, near the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains.

"Ah!"—and she turned to Paul with a radiant face that made him long to catch her in his arms—"do you know that wonderful country? Those fissured peaks, with their precipitous and inaccessible crests—their rock-cumbered valleys, concealing deep and lovely lakes? And the beautiful pine-woods creeping down to the foot of the mountains? I could spend all my life in that wonderful place, living in some peasant's hut, if need be."

"Tell me more!" Paul leaned toward her, forgetful now of all else but this divine and fascinating being.

"Ah!" she breathed, "you are a devotee of Nature, too, I know. You are a great traveller,—the Countess has said it," she continued quaintly. "You have been around the whole world. While as for me, I know Europe only, and of course Russia best of all countries. I have seen much of her—those wonderful rolling steppes, and rugged mountains. The North Sea, too, for I love the sea as my own soul.

"Often do I feel as though the sea were really in my soul itself. And as in the sea there are hidden water-plants, which only come to the surface at the moment they bloom, and sink again as soon as they fade, so at times do wondrous flower-pictures form in the depths of my soul, and rise up, shed perfume around, and gleam and vanish.... Then the ships that sail by! As you walk along the shore, is it not a pretty sight to see them—their great white sails look like stately swans. And still more beautiful is the sight when the setting sun throws great rays of glory round a passing bark."

In silence Paul gazed at her. He hardly breathed, lest some banal word should frighten this wonderful nymph away.

"And then at night,"—she went on dreamily—"what a strange and mysterious sensation the meeting with strange ships at sea produces. You fancy that perhaps your best friends, whom you have not seen for years, are sailing silently by, and that you are losing them forevermore."

Paul was strangely moved. He loved the sea himself, as well as the mountains—his Queen had taught him its call years ago—and he often wandered about the shore, pondering over the strange old legends with which centuries have wreathed it.

"You are wonderful!" he whispered to the lady. "You're like some water-maiden—and I believe your eyes are a bit of the sea itself!"

"Ah! Now you are like all the rest—French and Russians and Germans! Why spoil my rhapsody with personalities?"

"Forgive me!" Paul looked sufficiently penitent, and Mademoiselle with a playful gesture of absolution spoke again.

"It puts me in a strange and curious mood when I ramble along the shore in the twilight. Behind me are the flat dunes, before me the vast, heaving, immeasurable ocean, and above me the sky like an infinite crystal dome. Then I seem to be a very insect; and yet my soul expands to the size of the world. The high simplicity of Nature which surrounds me, elevates and oppresses me at the same time, more so than any other scene, however sublime. There never was any cathedral dome vast enough for me."

She stopped short, as if suddenly realizing she had stumbled upon dangerous ground.

And at that moment the Countess picked up the ladies with her eyes and they rose, to leave the men over their cigars. So Paul was left, to be drawn, willy-nilly, into a discussion of an international alliance, which did not interest him in the least.

Later when the men joined the ladies in the salon, Paul sought his sprite, but she was careful, or so it seemed, not to be left alone with him. And it was not until he said good-night that he could express to her the wish to see her again.

"You are such an uncertain lady," he said to her, smiling, "so restless within the confines of a town-house, that I hope you will let me call to-morrow—before you suddenly go dashing off to climb some peak, or to visit some foreign coast."

"Come for tea, to-morrow, if you wish." She looked up at him quickly—searchingly, Paul thought—and his blood raced madly through his veins.

Adieus were said, and Paul found himself again in his taximeter cab. In a state of mind quite different from that which had obsessed him on his way to the dinner, he arrived once more at the hotel.

"Ah! these mad English!" Paul's chauffeur said to himself as he pocketed an extravagant pourboire. "We see too few of them! Milord Rosbif must have been having some famous old wine over in the Faubourg St. Germain, is it not so?" he asked himself.

But it was the more exalted intoxication of the soul that sent Paul up the steps with the elastic stride of youth.

* * * * *

Who was she? Paul did not know, even now. Mademoiselle Vseslavitch had said nothing of her family or her home. Beyond the fact that she was Russian, and a friend of the Dalmatian Ambassador's wife—herself a Slav—Paul was still ignorant. Indeed, for all he knew, she might be some poor relation—lack of fortune was the only possible reason he could ascribe for her being unmarried. Beautiful and attractive women, of good family—if they were rich—did not wander over the Continent long without husbands. Well—that mattered nothing. Thank heaven, he was not bound by any necessity of fortune.

Before he switched off his light that night Paul took from one of his boxes a small flat object of red morocco inlaid with gold. He lifted a tiny lid and there, through wide-set and strangely fascinating eyes a lady looked at him. It was the most amazing miniature Paul had ever seen. And the face depicted there with some unknown master's consummate skill—how often had it proved for him the only consolation he could find in the whole world.

His eyes dimmed as they conveyed to him the image of his still beloved Imperatorskoye—he pressed the bauble to his lips. Ah! God! the cold glass! How different from her melting kiss!

Not easily did he control his emotions. Of late years he seldom opened the portrait because of the almost overwhelming rush of memories it always brought to him.

"There is a strange resemblance," he mused, after he had carried the miniature where the light shone full upon it. Was it the strong predominance of the Russian type which stamped alike the features of his dead Queen and the living lady he had seen that evening? Paul could not tell. He closed the case reluctantly. Never had he expected to see another comparable to his long lost love. Well, he was drifting, perhaps. Who knew?

And yet he felt again, as his hand rested upon the precious casket, that she in her wisdom must be cognizant of it all. Indeed, Paul had gone through the years of his manhood with a feeling that her presence was always near to him. The conviction that had come to him as he had stood in the Cathedral at Langres was too strong to be shaken off. Whatever happened—and Paul meant to win the woman he had that night left in the Faubourg St. Germain—he felt sure his Queen had willed it.

Such is the inexplicable influence that the dead sometimes exert. I will not try to tell you more of that now. It would take too long. And I should first have to tell you about many sad things that happened a score of years ago, if you do not know them already. And then I might become melancholy. It is my pleasure instead to tell another story altogether, which is joyful and appropriate. And it is this very story which I mean to tell in this book.



CHAPTER XVI

When Paul rang the bell at the Dalmatian Embassy the next afternoon it was with a firm determination to learn more of the Countess's guest. If she would not tell him about herself, then he would find out from the wife of the Ambassador.

The Countess had always warmly welcomed Paul, when Count Oreshefski presided over the legation house in London, and Paul had responded to her motherly interest by opening his heart to a greater extent even than to his own mother, the proud Lady Henrietta. For the Countess had known and loved his Queen—a fact which formed an unalterable bond of sympathy between them.

Paul wandered about the drawing-room, when the footman had departed with his card, too restless—too eager—to be seated. In one of his turns about the room his eyes alighted on an object which instantly arrested his idle steps. It was a woman's photograph, lying on a small table, as though placed there by a careless hand and then forgotten. A tiny object to work such an effect, but it was enough to bring Paul to a round halt.

There, looking up at him from the card, was the face of the woman he had come to see—Mademoiselle Vseslavitch. There was a wistful, touching expression to the pictured face, but it was a remarkably fine likeness, and Paul glowed with secret joy as he hid it away in his breast-pocket, murmuring inaudibly to be forgiven for the theft, but—alas for the cause of honesty—gleefully unrepentant.

He scarcely had time to move from the table, as his ear caught the rustle of approaching silk, when the fair original of the photograph entered, alone, and greeted him cordially.

"I am so sorry!" she said, as she held out her hand toward Paul. "The Countess has been suddenly called to Etampes, where her sister is ill. I am left to do the honours at the tea-table. You won't mind, I hope?"

Paul expressed himself as sorry to learn of the illness of the Countess's sister; he did not know the lady. And he spoke the usual regrets over missing the charming society of the Ambassador's wife. But there was a light in his eye which denied any great grief. As a matter of fact, he was overjoyed that he would have the Countess's guest to himself.

"Come into the library," said Mademoiselle Vseslavitch, "and we will have the tea things brought in there. It's not too early for you, is it?"

Paul laughed at the idea of its ever being too early for an Englishman's tea. Under pressure of work, when Parliament was sitting, he drank innumerable cups. And even when he was spending his time at Verdayne Place he always had tea ready to drink between sets of tennis.

The Verdayne tea was famous all over the countryside. It was a Russian variety. Paul always steadfastly refused to divulge to anyone—ever the Vicar's wife—the place where he bought it, and he always had it prepared in a Russian samovar.

Once in the library, a great sombre room to which an open coal fire lent a cheerful touch, Paul's companion seated herself at a low tea-table and busied herself with the samovar.

"This is Russian tea," she said, smiling. "You may not care for it."

"On the contrary," Paul replied, sipping the steaming amber fluid—"I always use this same kind at home. One can't fail to detect the peculiar aromatic flavour which tea retains when it has travelled overland, but which most of the leaves sold in England lose in coming by sea."

"This is my own—which I always carry with me," Mademoiselle Vseslavitch remarked. "We have used no other in our family for many years."

"And where, Mademoiselle, if I may ask, does this highly discriminating family reside? Perhaps, in the course of my wanderings there might come a time when it would be a most important matter for me to obtain a cup of this truly remarkable brew."

Mademoiselle Vseslavitch laughed mischievously at Paul. She had motioned him to a chair where the firelight reached his face, whereas her own was more in shadow. He did not see the amusement in her eyes when she replied:

"Oh! You can find tea like that in many houses east of the Balkans. It is really not wonderful at all."

Paul saw that the lady did not care to tell him much of herself, and he did not venture to press her further just then. But now that the Countess was not there to question, he felt that he must make some effort later.

As they sat there the lady talked to him of things in Paris, of the Luxembourg, the Louvre, Notre Dame, the boulevards, and then she wickedly mentioned the Bois de Boulogne. But Paul did not prove very responsive on that subject. The remembrance of the spectacle he had presented the afternoon before did not please him.

He knew right well that she was teasing him, though she did not mention the incident. He almost wished she would—it might give him an opportunity to say to her the words that he longed to say.

As for Lucerne—or Langres—Mademoiselle nimbly avoided those spots—it was as if they had no place on her map of Europe. And try as he could, Paul could not bring himself to mention them.

At last the ridiculousness of the situation dawned on him. Suppose he should boldly recall to Mademoiselle the rencontre in the rustic tea-house at Lucerne? Clearly, he might commit an unfortunate faux pas by such a move. No, he dared not speak to her of an incident so unconventional. He must ignore the fact that he had ever seen her before, unless she herself mentioned it. It was clear that she would demand careful wooing. This was a time when he must keep himself well in hand.

And just as Paul had reached this conclusion something happened—it was but a little thing—that upset all his well-laid plans.

As the lady held out more tea for Paul and he drew near to take it, he caught once more, as at Lucerne, the faintest breath of that strange perfume so dear to his memory. His hand shook with such sudden agitation that he set the cup upon the table, lest it fall.

The lady looked up quickly at Paul, and as he stood there over her their eyes met fairly. All skillful fencing was over. The time had come when the truth must be told.

"Let us drop the mask, Mademoiselle," he said with a slight choke in his voice. Without warning the thrill of youth had fired his blood and he cast prudence to the four winds. What mattered conventionality? What mattered anything? He only knew that he cared more for her than for all else in the whole world, and he took her hand in his with a tumultuous heart.

"I love you, dear," he said simply. "You yourself are the beautiful lady I have sought constantly since that time I first saw you, as I looked up into the starry skies. At first I thought your eyes also were stars."

She gazed up at him for a moment, her hand motionless in his, while neither stirred.

"My heart misgives me!" she said then. "Words are so easily said—they are often spoken idly—pour passer le temps—and soon forgotten. Ah! Sir Paul! forgive me, I beg of you—if I was mad once. I promise myself it shall never happen again. It was unfortunate—but there are things one cannot explain."

"But I love you," Paul repeated.

"Are you sure it is love?" she asked him.

Ah! how well Paul knew now, and he bent toward the face of his dreams.

"No! no! not that!" she said, and rose from her place. "You don't know what you do. Please go! go! quickly, for I must be alone."

And then as Paul hesitated for an instant, she fled through the heavy draperies into the room beyond, leaving but a breath of the faint, sweet perfume to hallow the air.

With heart bowed down Paul passed out through the great doorway, the words from an old play ringing through his brain:

"She was lovable, and he loved her; but he was not lovable, and she loved him not."



CHAPTER XVII

With the many details of the evening that Paul spent, I will not weary you, dear reader. Wandering about the boulevards he went, like one walking in a dream, at times stopping to rest at some quiet table apart from the throng of merry-makers, entirely disregardful of the laughing faces, the friendly glances that now and then searched him out. Like a canker worm misery gnawed at his heart.

He stopped at a cable office and despatched to his mother, the Lady Henrietta, a message which, though she knew it not, was pregnant with meaning.

"Delayed indefinitely in Paris."

Paul wondered afterward, as he sat quietly sipping his coffee in a small cafe, that in the little breast of one mortal there could be such room for infinite wretchedness. Within his heart that night was nothing but darkness and pain. He felt as though his very heart was breaking and bleeding. The sweat lay cold upon his brow and he sighed deeply.

Alas it was all true. He loved her, though she loved him not; he gave her all, and she gave him nothing; and yet he could not part from her. He could not help his unlucky passion.

Contrary to his wont, he did not, as he sat alone, dream his way back into the past. He looked rather into the mystic haze of the future, and heard not the confused sound of the voices of men and women, nor the gay music which filled the place.

Paul, after all, was no seer. As to what the outcome would be, all the dreaming he might do would tell him nothing. He rose and proceeded to his hotel.

* * * * *

But to return for a moment to the source of Paul's unhappiness. He might not have been so wretched as he sat in the little cafe could he have seen her in her boudoir, now weeping with wild uncontrollable sobs, now smiling radiantly through her tears.

For Mademoiselle Natalie Vseslavitch was at once the happiest and the most miserable of women. She had taken advantage of the privilege of her sex when she feigned to doubt Paul's fervent declaration that afternoon. She did believe him. Her keen feminine instinct told her that his simple "I love you" were not the idle words she pretended to think them.

And yet with the joy of being loved by the one who was the dearest to her own heart came also the crushing remembrance of the dreadful barrier by which she was forever shut from happiness. However, the indomitable will of her proud ancestry finally asserted itself. She sat down at her dainty writing table, and in a steady hand she wrote:

"I am going away to-morrow, and I may never see you again. When this reaches you I shall be gone. Whether we meet again sometime will depend upon many things. As for those which concern me, I cannot write you now. And you? Can you not imagine obstacles for yourself? Has it not occurred to you, even now, that I—a strange woman—may be many things you had not, at first, dreamed of? There are those, as you must surely know, whose business it is to roam about the centers of Europe. And for what purpose? None know their missions, or what master they may serve, except the one whose will they implicitly obey. You have told me that you love me. Are you sure, my friend, that that would not all be changed if I were some one—something—that I seemed not? Think well over this, I pray you. It may mean much to me.

"Meanwhile do not try to find me, for I shall be hidden far away. Some day, perhaps, you may know all."

When Paul received this letter the following morning it was almost more than he could bear. How could she have misjudged him so! A longing seized him to find her—in spite of her charge. The situation was unendurable—he must seek her out and convince her that it was she herself alone that mattered. What was position to him? He had position. He was endowed with worldly goods. And he could marry whom he chose. He looked at the note again.

What could she mean?

Ah! he had it! She was a secret agent—there was no doubt—working probably in the service of the Dalmatian government. Well, for all that Paul cared nothing. The only course of action open to him was to follow her, to the ends of the world, if need be.

He would convince her—she must be convinced—and then, he hoped, all would be well. She cared for him, somewhat—the tone of the letter seemed to show that—though she tried to conceal it, evidently. The Countess was expected back that day—he would seek her help.

Paul wasted no time. Another hour found him at the Dalmatian Embassy, face to face with the Countess Oreshefski, who was instantly all sympathy as she noted his agitation.

"My dear lady," he said to her, "you will not think it strange, I hope, if I ask your help in a matter of great importance to me?"

"What is it, Sir Paul? You know that if I can be of assistance to you in any way it will make me only too happy." And the Countess regarded him with a tender look.

Paul had a strange attraction for women, as I have said, and this fine woman, having lost her only son—Paul's own age—many years before, had always felt a mother's interest in him.

"You are very kind," Paul continued, "and I will be quite frank with you. I shall have to presume upon your good nature to ask your advice and help once more. To come to the point at once: Yesterday, here in your house, I told Mademoiselle Vseslavitch that I loved her. To-day she is gone,—where I do not know." Paul looked at his companion with appealing eyes.

"My dear friend!" the Countess exclaimed, with truly feminine irrelevancy, "I am delighted. I would not be a woman if I were not always ready to enlist in the cause of a lover. And as for helping you, I would do anything for Sir Paul Verdayne which lay in my power. You want to find her at once?" she asked him.

"Yes, Madame."

"Then you are going to Russia—to-day, if I read your face rightly. Well, it is a long journey. I will tell you in two words where to find her—near Kieff. Go to that city; from there a ride of some fifty miles across country awaits you—to the Vseslavitch estate. Everyone in Kieff knows the place. You will have no great difficulty finding it—beyond the inevitable discomforts of travel in that corner of the world. But what are hardships to a man in love?" And she smiled at Paul in a manner so infectious that he already felt his spirits rising.

"You are too kind, my dear lady!" he exclaimed. "You are a real fairy-god-mother. See, with your magic wand you have touched the mountain in my path—and it is gone. And now, god-mother," he said, almost gaily, "tell me—who is this beautiful lady?"

"Ah! that you must learn from her own lips. Simply Mademoiselle Vseslavitch she must be to you until she wills it otherwise." She laughed as she read the sudden disappointment written on Paul's face.

"You remember the old tale of the knight whose kiss transformed the beggar-maid into a king's daughter? Some such method I would suggest, perhaps."

"But I've tried that already!" Paul almost said. But he caught himself in the nick of time.

"How can I ever thank you enough?" he said as he rose to go. "You saw Mademoiselle yourself before she went?" he asked.

"No. She left hurriedly this morning, very early, before my return. My maid told me that she had gone back to her home."

With grateful words Paul made his adieu and hurried away. The door had scarcely closed behind him when a footman entered the morning-room. In his hand he carried a small tray—and on it there lay a letter.

"A note which Mademoiselle Vseslavitch directed me to give you, Madame," he said.

The Countess opened it.

"DEAR LADY:

"I am going home. Forgive my seeming rudeness. You know my moods too well, I think, not to understand that I have suddenly felt the call of the steppe. And I charge you, my old friend, as you love me, tell no one of my whereabouts. Ever your devoted

"NATALIE."

That was all.

"This note, Francois—why was it not given me before?" she asked the footman sharply.

"Ah, pardon Madame—they did not tell me you had returned until just now. And Mademoiselle charged me to deliver it to you with my own hands."

The Countess motioned him away. Had she been indiscreet to take Sir Paul so quickly into her confidence? It was still not too late, probably, for a messenger to catch him at the Hotel du Rhin before he left. He was too much a gentleman, she knew, not to consider as unsaid the information she had given him, if she asked it of him.

"Pouf!" she exclaimed, with a shrug. "This is but the whim of a girl who does not know her own mind. Come—I will be a consistent fatalist. The affair is out of my hands. After all, it is just what I have long wished—though I never dreamed for such good fortune as that it would be Sir Paul Verdayne. She'll simply have to forgive me"—and the Countess smilingly hummed an old Dalmatian love-song as she left the room.

Meanwhile, Paul paced the floor of his sitting-room impatiently while Baxter packed his luggage. A strange exultation moved him, and he dreamt of joy and love. To him, his dreams were more than mere bubbles—before his eyes lay all the glory of the earth, and a whole Heaven besides. Ah! if the good god-mother could only have endowed him with seven-leagued boots! He could scarcely wait for the long journey to be finished. And it had not yet begun.

"Hurry, Baxter!" he called, as he looked again at his watch. And Baxter, thinking of the pretty femme de chambre, once more was tempted to give notice.



CHAPTER XVIII

On and on, during long days and restless nights, our Don Quixote journeyed—for was not Paul like that noble knight, endeavouring to recall a long dead past unto life? After all, there was only one Dulcinea del Tobosa—and she was still, and ever would be, the most beautiful woman in the world.

One morning, at length, Paul awakened from a troublous sleep. The train had stopped, and looking out of the window in the early mist he saw some strange figures standing by the side of the track—bearded men, mostly, with brilliant scarlet shirts, and trousers tucked into huge clumsy boots—some of them half-covered with long white aprons. He recognized these gentry as customs officials and porters. At last he had reached the Russian frontier!

He dressed quickly, eager, for the first time in his life, to have his baggage examined and his passports inspected. Usually Paul regarded such performances as a violation of the Heaven-sent rights of an Englishman to wander unmolested over the face of the earth. But now—once the ceremony was over—it meant that he was one step nearer the goal.

Having satisfied the zealous subjects of the Tsar that he was neither a Nihilist nor a Jew, and that his luggage contained no high explosives, nor other contraband goods, Paul's history was carefully written down in a leather covered book, and he was granted the right as an English gentleman to seek amusement where he would throughout the domains of the Little Father at St. Petersburg.

The other passengers having in their turn been duly examined, the train at last moved on, to drag itself monotonously for hour after hour through countless cornfields and stretches of forest. At last—and Paul had begun to think the time would never come—he stepped down and stretched his tired muscles in the railway station at Warsaw. The prospect of a good hotel, with a tub, a well-served dinner and a real bed once more, Paul considered for a moment. But no! he would push on at once. He could rest at his journey's end—this was no time to look after the comfort of his body; the cry of his soul must first be satisfied.

And after a brief delay he found himself again en route.

On his travels in out-of-the-way corners of the globe, Paul had long ago accustomed himself to discomfort—even hardship. But he shuddered as he thought of his dainty lady being subjected to the vicissitudes of a long trip on those primitive Russian railways. For two days and a night, in a heaving, swaying train, in a carriage full of reeking people smoking rancid tobacco, he was forced to curb his eagerness. As the time of his arrival drew nearer Paul found it all the more difficult to endure the delay.

It seemed as if the end would never come. The country was almost all forest now and more bleak and mournful than any Paul had ever seen. The innumerable willow trees, with their branches drooping to earth as if they, of all living things, denied the joys of spring, exerted on him a strangely depressing influence.

But finally, to Paul's relief, the country became more open, and at last, as the train rolled along the edge of a clear upland, Paul saw the sheen of the glorious Dnieper, a silver thread beyond which rose a low range of brown hills covered with woods. And soon he made out the spires and domes of Kieff.

A little while longer—and then with a long-drawn sigh of satisfaction he felt the firm earth under foot once more. Kieff at last! Paul could scarcely believe it.

Into one of the open vans that meet the weary traveller Paul climbed, and rode across the hills to the fashionable quarter of the town. The Grand Hotel, he found, was very comfortable, and he retired that night in a calmer frame of mind than he had known since he left Paris.

For he felt that he was on the threshold.

From Kieff Paul proceeded the next morning, accompanied by his faithful Baxter, who held in true British contempt the "houtlandish Russians," and grumbled far more than he was wont as he stowed into the droskie such necessities as a week's absence required. But Paul's eagerness proved infectious, and before the sun had arisen they were far on their way.

It seemed a bit unconventional to Paul's English mind to appear at a lady's house without an invitation—even warning of his coming. But there was nothing for it—it was the only course that offered. Those living in Russian country-houses, he knew, were used to entertaining such travellers as came their way unbidden. In sparsely settled districts, where there were not even wretched inns for shelter, it was a custom that had come about quite naturally.

Paul had never been in that part of Russia before, and it was with more than passing interest that he observed the scenes around him. At first he could not understand the passion which he knew Mademoiselle Vseslavitch felt for her own country, for near Kieff the land was sterile—the scenery somewhat uneventful. But as the leagues put themselves between him and the town the aspect of the landscape changed. It was early Summer or late Spring then, you remember, and after some hours Paul found himself driven through luxuriant vegetation. As his eye traversed the great billows of the grassy sea he saw that one might easily become lost in the verdure. And yet what glorious reward awaited the bold adventurer! Somewhere, beyond this emerald ocean, waited the lady he sought.

At mid-day they stopped before a peasant's hut, in the doorway of which a moujik stood, wrapped in sheepskin and with long and shaggy hair and beard.

"Good-day, brother; how goes it?" asked Paul, for he knew a little of the language.

"Good-day, little father; thank God, it goes well with me," the man answered. "What is your pleasure? How can I serve you?" and his face unbent with a welcoming smile.

"A little food, brother, if you will," Paul replied, "for we have come many leagues."

The moujik made sign for Paul and his men to enter, and soon at a rude table they were eating black bread and drinking kvass.

Fresh from the cafes of Paris, Paul delighted in this primitive simplicity. The transition from the boulevards to the steppe was most refreshing. When after a short rest they were ready to start on again, Paul would have the man accept money for their entertainment. But the peasant waved the coin away.

"To take payment for the bread and salt which a passing stranger consumes in thy dwelling is a great sin," he said. "I am happy to have served thee."



CHAPTER XIX

Once more on the road, the driver urged on his horses, already tired. The country was fast becoming rougher, and more wooded, and now and then Paul caught sight of hills in the distance. As the afternoon wore on he saw that they would be fortunate if night-fall did not overtake them before they arrived at their destination. The road was full of deep ruts—at some stages almost impassable—and when, just as darkness was close upon them, they came upon a large and comfortable appearing house—evidently the home of some great landed proprietor—Paul told the driver to turn in.

The house showed little sign of any life about it until two great wolf-hounds came bounding out and barked loudly at the travellers. Then a servant appeared at the door, and bidding the dogs begone, asked Paul to alight and enter, directing Baxter and the driver to the court-yard in the rear.

The man-servant led Paul through a dark hall into a great drawing-room. As he entered the room a woman laid down a book and rose. She must in her time have been uncommonly beautiful, Paul thought. She was beautiful even now, though her eyes were very tired and her face when in repose was hard and set. Her hair would have at once aroused suspicion that it was dyed, for it was lustrous and brilliant as burnished copper. But the suspicion would have been without justification, in the same way as would have been the notion that the very pronounced colour on the woman's cheeks was artificial too.

She seemed to hesitate a little, and just as Paul was about to crave pardon for his unceremonious intrusion (the servant had merely opened the door for him and he had entered unannounced) a man, dressed, like Paul, in ordinary tweeds, stepped quickly out of the darkness into the rays of the candelabra.

For a moment he gazed at Paul with curiosity without addressing him. Paul saw a man with an olive face set with dark, almond-shaped eyes beneath a pair of oblique and finely-pencilled brows; his nose was aquiline and assertive, his mouth shrewd and mean and scarcely hidden by a carefully-trained and very faintly-waxed moustache. He was exceedingly tall and astonishingly spare in build.

"Ah, a traveller, I see," the Russian said at length in careful English. "You are most welcome, I assure you, sir. We are delighted to have your company. It is a pleasure which seldom comes to us in this lonely spot. My name," he added, stretching out his hand to Paul, "is Boris Ivanovitch, and this lady," turning to his companion, "is—my sister."

Paul bowed to the red-haired woman.

"Aldringham is my name," he said, as he grasped the gentleman's outstretched hand. He did not like the look in the heavy-lidded eyes of his host, and some quick instinct prevented him from giving his own name—so he fell back upon that of his mother's family.

And now a third occupant of the house entered—a tall young man of the most unpleasant appearance.

"My cousin Michael," said Ivanovitch in an even voice, "Michael, this is Mr. Aldringham, an English traveller."

The newcomer had very light blue eyes, closely set together, and a large, red, hawk-like nose. His hands too were large and red, with immense knuckles and brutal, short, stubbed nails. Paul took one of the huge red hands with a barely repressed shudder. It was cold and clammy and strong as a vise.

"If ever," thought the baronet to himself, "I have touched the hand of a murderer, I have touched one now."

The tall young man sat down presently and carefully watched Paul with his narrow, light blue eyes, which glinted and flashed all over Paul's face. Boris Ivanovitch looked at him sidelong. The red-haired woman alone gazed at him openly and frankly with eyes that were almost honestly blue.

There was a little pause while conversation hung fire. There was nothing for this curious collection of human beings to talk about except the traveller himself, and on this subject their tongues had to be silent as long as he remained.

Suddenly the door opened, and a portly man with a sallow, greasy face came quickly in. He stood still, with his hand on the panel of the door, and gave a short, quick gasp which caused Paul to look at him sharply. That form struck Paul as strangely familiar.

The fat man closed the door behind him gently, and came into the centre of the room.

"Mr. Aldringham," said Ivanovitch, "allow me to present Monsieur Virot, who acts as manager of our estates."

The Frenchman's sallow and greasy countenance broke into a hideously affable smile as Paul shook hands with him.

The pause which followed this introduction became so embarrassing that the lady suggested that they go in to tea; and in a cheerful dining-room Paul found himself looking curiously at the collection of tea and coffee pots, vodka decanters, bacon and eggs, and muffins and cakes, which were spread promiscuously on the clean white tablecloth.

The conversation turned on many things, but for the most part upon the weather. Paul's host finished before the rest, and, pleading business, begged to be excused, and left the room.

When the others of the odd little party had eaten and drunk their fill of the heterogeneous meal they returned to the drawing-room and Paul saw before him a most uncomfortable evening. "A strangely assorted company," he thought, "to find here in this far-away spot." Clearly, they were all people of the world, and yet there seemed a curious restraint upon them. Paul guessed, somehow, that it was because of his presence.

"I trust that you will pardon me, Mademoiselle," and he turned to the lady—"but I have travelled all the way from Kieff to-day, and to-morrow morning I must rise early to go on my way to the Vseslavitch estate. I would prove but a dull companion at dinner, I am afraid. If you will permit me, I think I had better go up to my room."

There was no dissent to Paul's suggestion. In fact, Cousin Michael smiled slightly behind one of his great red hands as if in approval of the idea.

So, to the evident relief of all, Paul said good-night. He was glad to escape from his strange companions.



CHAPTER XX

Hearing the sound of lightly-falling footsteps behind him, Boris Ivanovitch ceased his investigations of Sir Paul's kit-bag and cautiously turned his head.

As he did so, he experienced a painful sensation. He felt a little cold ring of steel pressed against his right temple, and from past experience, both objective and subjective, he knew that a Colt cartridge was held, so to speak, in leash within five inches of his head.

For several infinitely long seconds Boris did not entirely revel in the pause that followed.

It was, indeed, with some relief that he heard Paul's distinctly pleasant, though slightly mocking, voice break the accentuated silence and say:

"Don't be alarmed, Ivanovitch. I mean you no harm. I am simply psychologically interested in your movements. The fact that I am attempting to protect the contents of my kit-bag from your attentions is of comparatively small importance."

Boris drew a little breath of relief, not the less sincere because he was conscious that the muzzle of the revolver was withdrawn from his temple.

He heard the door of the chamber close softly; then the pleasant voice spoke again, though with a slightly harder ring in its tones.

"Stand up, Ivanovitch," said the voice, "and be seated. I have a good deal to say, and it is not my habit to talk to any man when I find him on his knees."

Boris rose a little unsteadily and faced about, to find the most disconcerting eyes of Sir Paul bent full upon him.

Still retaining the revolver in his hand, the baronet seated himself upon the edge of his bed and then motioned to his host to sit down upon a chair.

For a few minutes the two men gazed at each other with curiosity and interest. Swiftly, however, it came to Paul that a man in Boris's apparent position was not likely to be engaged in theft. There sprang into his brain the notion that the man was simply searching through his belongings with the idea of blackmail.

It almost made Paul laugh to think that any man should attempt to blackmail him. He had nothing to disguise, nothing to hide.

Indeed, as he sat easily on the edge of the bed, looking at the dark, disconcerted face before him, he had half a mind to throw his weapon aside and to tell Ivanovitch to go his way in peace.

"What did you find?" Paul asked.

Boris did not even blink his heavy-lidded eyes.

"Nothing," he said.

"Yet," rejoined Paul, almost meditatively, "you must have been here some minutes at least before I arrived."

"I tell you," said Boris, almost earnestly, "that I found nothing."

"That is to say," said Paul, "nothing which you could turn to your own good account."

Boris smiled a sour yet demure little smile.

"Precisely," he said evenly.

"Permit me," said the baronet, just as quietly, "to inform you that you are a liar. I think you will be able to hand me something that is of interest to us both."

"I was not aware that I could," replied Boris, with a touch of sarcasm in his voice.

Paul picked up again the six-shooter which he had laid carelessly at his side.

"Try," he said, and his voice was gently persuasive.

Just a flicker of vindictiveness crept into Boris' eyes, and under the suasion of firearms he turned again to the bag.

After a few moments Paul, now schooled to infinite placidity, inquired for the second time if he had found anything.

"Only a few papers," said Boris, crossly.

"Pardon me," said the baronet, "if I am not mistaken you have found something that seems of interest to you. Be kind enough to hand it to me."

The Russian turned about, and with a carefully-manicured hand offered Paul a photograph which Paul had seen protruding from his pocket.

Paul took it and looked at it casually, though the muscles on his closed jaws stood out in a manner that was not wholly pleasant to look upon. It was, however, with unfathomable eyes that he surveyed the portrait before him.

The photograph revealed the features of a girl with an astonishingly quiet face. Her cheeks were round and soft, and her chin was round and soft, too, but her mouth, a little full and pronounced, was distinctly sad and set. A pair of large eyes looked out upon the world unwaveringly and serenely, if a little sorrowfully, beneath a pair of finely pencilled, level brows, which formed, as it were, a little bar of inflexible resolve. A mass of dark hair was coiled upon the girl's head after the manner of early Victorian heroines. It was a face at once striking and wistful in its splendour.

Paul looked up from the picture to Ivanovitch.

"You," he said simply, "know everybody hereabouts. Therefore I feel confident that you will be able to tell me the name of this girl. That is all I ask you—at present."

Boris laughed and then checked his laughter.

"The lady," he said, "is Mademoiselle Vseslavitch, who, as you are probably aware, lives no great distance away."

"So!" murmured Paul, and he nodded his head.

"Yes," said Boris, "and if it is of any interest to you to know it, I propose to marry the lady."

"Indeed!" said Paul.

He placed the picture carefully in his breast-pocket.

"You must forgive my being rude," he added, "but I should not now be in this country if I had not every intention of marrying the lady myself."

Boris was a man used to being hard hit. He was steeled against cunningly and swiftly-dealt blows, such as he himself administered, but this declaration of Sir Paul's, that he intended to marry Mademoiselle Vseslavitch, took him quite back.

"Oh!" he exclaimed softly, and his voice had a certain note of surprise in it.

The baronet smiled a little grimly, but his eyes were as serene and as cold as ever.

Boris's "Oh!" had told him much.

He realized that he had dealt his host an exceedingly well-landed blow. Then the baronet's smile died, for, following the train of his suspicious thoughts, he instinctively grasped and held on to the idea that just as Boris had been searching his kit-bag for the purpose of blackmail, so that individual purposed marriage with Mademoiselle Vseslavitch to the same end.

This notion disquieted him greatly.

It disturbed him so much that the hard eyes hardened. Only the baronet's friends knew that they sometimes hardened because of the softness behind their gaze.

Paul's heart, indeed, rose in revolt against the suggestion that this man should for a moment presume to reach out and touch the hand of Mademoiselle Vseslavitch. Not for such a man as Boris was the girl with the calm yet, at the same time, troubled eyes, that had looked out from the picture.

Paul made a shrewd guess that if Boris had his hopes set on her, the girl with the dark hair and steadfast eyes stood in some peril.

The mere thought of it quickened his blood, and the quickening of his blood livened his brain still more, so that he watched, almost cat-like, the glance of Boris's eyes as they followed the placing of the lady's picture in Paul's pocket.

For a couple of minutes nothing was said. Each man knew instinctively that he must move to the attack, but realized that a mistake at the opening of the game might possibly spell disaster.

It was the baronet who broke the silence.

"No man, except one such as you," he said, "would dream of regarding Mademoiselle Vseslavitch as a possible wife unless he were so equipped with all the arts of blackmail that he had some reason to hope for his success."

By this time Boris had got back his composure.

"You seem," he said casually, "to endow me with an exceedingly poor character."

"Not exactly," said Paul. "I endow you with an exceedingly dangerous one."

There was another pause, and the two pairs of eyes sought each other, and the heavy-lidded, slumberous eyes of Boris flickered and faltered beneath those of Paul.

"I am about to present to you an argument," continued the baronet, "which unswervingly follows my present conception. Long experience of this wicked world—by which I mean that particular kind of vulture-like humanity which preys upon better men than itself—enables me to assume that you are without question a blackmailer, a bad blackmailer, and a blackmailer of no common type.

"But I have also learnt this, that no blackmailer can stand alone. His offence is the most cowardly offence in the world. A blackmailer is always a coward, and a coward is invariably afraid of isolated action. I am therefore very certain that you do not stand alone in this attempt."

It had come upon Paul suddenly that this man was connected in some way with the scene he had witnessed at Lucerne—that he was the one for whom the fat man had acted as agent. And then, in a flash, he recalled the name "Boris" which Mademoiselle Vseslavitch had spoken; at that moment, too, Paul placed the personality of the Frenchman Virot. He and the fat man of Lucerne were one.

Boris's eyes left those of Paul and studied the panel behind the baronet's head.

"I should say," Paul continued, "that you were the headpiece, the brain-piece, of a well-planned scheme of crime."

The faint colour in Boris's face became fainter still. Paul believed he was pursuing the right trail.

"Now with such men as yourself—mind, I am not speaking so much from knowledge as from an intuition as to what I should do myself were I placed in similar circumstances—it is probable that you have sufficient intelligence, not only to rob your victims, but to rob your friends.

"Another piece of life's philosophy that roughing it has taught me is that the robber is always poor. I come, therefore, to the natural deduction that you are hard up."

Paul's whole expression of face changed suddenly. The coldness left it. And his keen eyes smiled with a smile that invited confidence from the man before him.

"Well?" said Boris. "And what of it?"

"Then," Paul continued coolly, "such a sum as two hundred thousand roubles would not come amiss to you. Such a sum I am prepared to pay you—under certain conditions."

All the pleasantness in Paul's face vanished again, and he looked at Boris with narrowed eyes.

"You realize that in my offering you such a sum," he said, "it will, of course, cost you something to earn it. A man who speculates must spend his own money to gain other people's. A criminal—you must forgive the word, but it is necessary—who seeks to make a great coup at the expense of others must put up a certain amount of money to bring it off.

"I think, however, that I am offering you quite enough to enable you to buy either the silence or the inactivity of your fellow criminals. Two hundred thousand roubles is a good deal of money, and your gang cannot be so large that you will not be able to afford a sufficient sum to render them your servants."

"Have a care," cried Boris, angrily, at last; "you don't know what you say."

"What do you mean?" demanded Paul.

"I mean," said Boris, "that I do not propose to be insulted any longer in my own house. Your offer of money is an affront which you will pay well for." He looked thoughtfully away for a few moments; then he turned sharply.

"I will be perfectly frank with you," he said with an amazingly good attempt at breezy honesty. "All of my friends are not particularly nice people, and if they had any idea that you were objectionable to me, not even the consideration of tapping your vast wealth would restrain them from putting you out of the way."

"There is such a thing," said Paul, lightly, "as killing the goose which lays the golden eggs."

"Yes," replied Boris, gravely, "but even a supply of golden eggs may be retained at too dear a price.

"However," he went on with an air of gaiety, "this is rather too serious a matter to consider to-night. I simply intended to throw out a kindly hint."

"I'm sure you are very good," said Paul, with a fine sarcasm. "I had not looked to you for such consideration."

Boris laughed, showing his fine teeth, and gave Paul a quizzical look.

"Don't you think," he began softly, "that you had better turn back and retrace your steps to-morrow?"

Paul looked at him scornfully.

"Do you think I have set out on this errand to be turned back by you?" he said to Boris.

"I suppose," Paul cried, with a certain tone of irony in his voice, "that you think I am a mere society butterfly. What do you think I care for all the scented drawing-rooms in the world, for polo, for Hurlingham, for a stuffy reception in some great house in town? Nothing—nothing! Give me the open prairie land, the tall, brown grass, the open sky, the joy of the weary body that has ridden hard all the day!"

He laughed shortly.

"Do you think," he continued to the astonished Boris, "that there is any soft, silk-bound pillow in Mayfair that could appeal to me when I could sleep under the stars?

"Heavens!" He reached out his arms and brought them to his sides again with a strenuous motion, all his muscles contracted. "I have learnt," he cried, "the lesson that life is not only real and earnest, but that life is hard, that life is a battle—a battle to be won!"

His eyes fell upon his strong, sinewy, brown hands, and he clenched his fists.

"I am not going back to England. I am going on—to win that girl of the picture—from you!"

Boris regarded him pleasantly.

"It seems," he said, "that you are not in a very good humour this evening."

"My humour suits me very well," answered Paul. He rose and walked over to the door, and held it open.

"For the present," he said, "you may go, but if I were you I would be careful how I indulged in any villainy."

Boris laughed lightly as he paused in the doorway.

"I am still thinking of Mademoiselle Vseslavitch," he said.

"Then you make a vast mistake," Paul answered. "She is not for you."

"We shall see what we shall see," tauntingly replied Boris, as he closed the door behind him.

But his remarks did not prevent Paul, when he retired, from promptly going to sleep.



CHAPTER XXI

During the night Paul was awakened—for a moment he thought he heard the sound of some struggle in the hall outside his door, and the sound of excited whispers. Then a woman's voice, in low, forceful tones, penetrated the stillness, and Paul heard distinctly:

"Come away, for God's sake!"

Then all was still.

Verdayne was no coward—but his fingers closed instinctively on the butt of the revolver that he had placed within easy reach. Puzzled, he lay awake for a time in the darkness, but finally nothing further happening, he fell asleep once more.

When he awoke the grey dawn was creeping into his windows and he rose immediately, anxious to escape the eerie atmosphere of the house, and begin the final stage of his journey. What an uncanny lot these Russian beggars were, to be sure.

He determined to leave as unceremoniously as he had come, and wrote a hasty note which he placed upon his dresser where it could easily be seen. As he stole quietly down the long hall, in an attempt not to awaken the household, he came suddenly upon Mademoiselle Ivanovitch seated in a chair drawn into a windowed recess. She started as he came upon her, but instantly recovered her calm poise of the evening before.

Paul apologized for the stealthy manner of his leave-taking, pleading the necessity of an early start.

She listened to him patiently, then glancing over her shoulder to see that she was not observed, "Forgive my being so blunt," she said, "but I think you are playing an exceedingly dangerous game. You have nothing to gain and everything to lose."

Paul turned to her almost sharply and said: "Are you sure that I have nothing to gain?"

She looked at him quickly, and her eyes were startled; the brilliant colour had left her face. Then she caught the baronet by the coat.

"Sir Paul," she cried in a low voice, "you are a young man. Do not destroy your life for a piece of folly. Cut yourself adrift from this while there is still time. Turn back, and never come to this wicked country again."

Paul took her hand and looked at her kindly. "Thank you, thank you very much. But I am moved to go, my dear lady," he said.

She made no answer to Paul's calmly voiced determination, save a despairing gesture, then turned silently away, and Paul, after a moment, continued on his quiet departure. The faithful Baxter had roused the driver in good season and was waiting at the steps as Paul emerged from the door. If he, too, had had an interruption in his slumbers, he gave no sign.

The driver, with an awkward jerk of his head, which Paul interpreted as a salutation, whipped up the horses, and once more they were on their way.

Not till Paul had ridden some distance did it strike him that the lady of the copper coloured hair had used his real name.

"The devil!" he said aloud, "how could she have known me?" But rack his memory as he would, he could not recall ever having seen her before.

What did she mean anyhow, with her words of ill-omen? He could not guess. It was all a mystery.

Paul was scarcely in a happy frame of mind that day. He liked to see his difficulties plain before him rather than to be hemmed about with mysteries that he could not understand. And difficulty seemed to be piling itself upon difficulty.

Much, of course, remained to be explained. He was not sure of the different parts which the weirdly associated people whom he had met that afternoon played in Boris's game. The young man Michael, with the large, cruel, red hands, was probably Boris's principal striking force in times of trouble. Boris himself, he imagined, furnished the brains.

But what of the red-haired woman? That she had her part allotted to her in the strange drama unfolding itself Paul could not doubt. But what part?

Paul hardly believed that she was really Boris's sister.

But what tie bound her to him? What tie kept her within the confines of this strange collection of human beings?

For a moment Paul's heart grew light within him. Was she his wife? If he could but establish that, then Boris's boast that he would marry Mademoiselle Vseslavitch was vain indeed.

Sir Paul was, indeed, confronted by a very Gordian knot of problems. He laughed a little as he made the simile to himself, until he reflected that he was not an Alexander armed with a sword who could disperse the problems at one blow. His, indeed, would be the laborious task of unravelling them one by one; nor could he see any better way than by beginning at the very beginning, which, so far as he was concerned, meant a full knowledge of Boris's intimates and surroundings.

Not indeed till his guide turned and told him, some hours later, that they were nearing the Vseslavitch house did Paul put the matter out of his mind, and then, as they swung into a long avenue bordered with pines, his thoughts were all for the lady whom he sought.

The house was a very old one, built of stone and massive oaken timbers which showed the ravages of many years.

Paul gazed almost affectionately at the rambling mansion as it disclosed itself to his eager eyes—for did it not shelter the one who was for him the dearest lady in the whole world?

The door opened quickly in answer to his knock and Paul found himself in a great hall furnished with a lavishness which surprised him, in such an out of the way corner of the world. On the lofty walls hung priceless old engravings, and paintings on silk, with marvellous needlework cunningly aiding the artist's brush. Paul had seen such ancient works of art in the great Continental museums—but never a collection like this. Bear-skin rugs lay strewn about the floor, and as he warmed himself at the huge porcelain stove—for it was a cool morning—he admired them with all the enthusiasm of an ardent sportsman.

He turned, as a door opened at the further end of the room, and there at last stood his dear lady. With quick strides Paul reached her and pressed her hand to his lips. She made no objection to his salutation—perhaps that custom was too prevalent in her own country to bear much significance.

As she first gazed at him a glad smile lighted her face—and then she grew quite sober.

"Ah!" she said, "you have disobeyed. How could you?"

"Dear lady," answered Paul, "you imposed on me the only command I could not follow. Surely I may be forgiven, I hope, for entering the Promised Land?"

She smiled at him—almost sadly, Paul thought, and then she said, with a far-off look in her wonderful eyes, as if she forgot his presence for the moment—

"It is passing strange—that events should take this turn—that you should have come at this time. There are, I know now, divinities that shape our ends." And then she turned to Paul and said quickly:

"What madness has brought you here? My friend, believe me, you should never have followed me. This one day you may stay—because I'm weak—and then, I beg of you, go while there is yet time."

The strange iteration of his earlier warning made Paul wonder.

"Tell me," he cried, as he looked searchingly into her face, "what hidden meaning lies beneath your words? And those of the red-haired woman at the home of Boris Ivanovitch?" And he repeated to her the other's warning—almost identical with hers.

"Oh!" she gasped, and grew quite white, "you did not stay at that house? And yet you are here? Thank God for that." Then, though Paul pressed her, she would say no more.

"Come," she said after a brief pause, "my brother is in the library. You must know him." And she led the way through a short passage to a room beyond.

A handsome man of about thirty-five, who resembled Mademoiselle strikingly, rose as they entered.

"Peter," she said, "this gentleman is Sir Paul Verdayne. He is an old friend of the Countess Oreshefski. I met him at her house in Paris. Sir Paul will be our guest—until to-morrow," she added.

The young man grasped Paul's hand warmly.

"A friend of the good Countess is most welcome," he exclaimed. "I am only sorry that your stay is to be so short."

Clearly, Mademoiselle was determined that Paul should not remain with them long.

"Will you pardon me, Sir Paul," the young man continued, "if I leave you on my sister's hands for the moment? Our overseer wishes to see me on a matter of some importance and I shall not be free until luncheon."

While he was speaking a large man entered—a wonderfully fine specimen of Russian manhood. As he stood there, proud but respectful, his flaming red beard falling over his broad chest, he looked like some Viking who had just stepped out of an old myth.

"Alexander Andrieff, our overseer," Peter explained, and the man bowed low to Paul.

"And now, Natalie, if you will entertain Sir Paul for the next hour he will perhaps overlook my rudeness."

"Not at all, sir," Paul interrupted, "I am the one who should apologize for having so imposed upon your hospitality." And with Mademoiselle Vseslavitch he retired.

So her name was Natalie! Paul liked the name—it seemed to fit her excellently. And he looked lovingly at the charming girl beside him.

"We will take a stroll in the garden, if it pleases you," she suggested.

Paul was delighted. They stepped outside the house into a large enclosure surrounded by a high stone wall. Beyond a small lake which filled the center of the garden, they came to a seat hidden by screening shrubs from the windows that gave upon the spot.

As they sat there under that wonderful Southern sky, with the air laden with the perfume of countless cherry blossoms, Paul felt that he had been translated into fairy-land, and he was almost afraid to speak lest he break the spell and suddenly find himself back in blase Western Europe again.

He took her hand gently in both of his. It was a beautiful hand, so white and tender and aristocratic. On the third finger was a ring with a blue antique; on her forefinger—worn in the Russian fashion—a diamond. It seemed a talisman to Paul, and as he looked at it he was happy. Feeling the touch of these fingers, his reason stopped dead and a sweet dream came over him—the continuation, as it were, of some interrupted fairy-scene.

"Beautiful Princess!" he whispered softly, as he leaned toward her pale, smiling, gentle face.

Her delicately curved red lips played with mingled melancholy and happiness, and almost childish impulse; and when she spoke, the words were deeply toned, sounding almost like sighs, yet with rapid and impetuous utterance, like a warm shower of blossoms from her beauteous mouth.

"My lover," she said, and Paul's heart leaped with wild joy at the words, "my lover for this one day—listen while I tell what I can hide from you no longer."

And then with halting words she told him of her peril.

"That house where you stayed last night," she said, "it is the home of my cousin Boris," and a sudden shudder passed over her as she spoke the name. "He has long wished to marry me—and I have steadfastly refused; I cannot tell you how I loathe him. It was to escape his importunities that I went to Switzerland—and alas! now I have come back, at the order of the Tsar, who commands me to yield to him." She paused. Paul drew her close in tender sympathy.

"I thought once," she went on, "when I left Paris a week ago, that I could force myself to do this hateful thing. A faithful subject must obey the Tsar. But now I know not what the outcome will be. I cannot make up my mind to consent—and Boris grows more impatient every day. Tell me," she turned her wonderful eyes up to Paul—"what manner of people had he with him?"

And Paul described to his lady the villainous Michael with the red hands, and Virot, the oily Frenchman. And as he told of Mademoiselle Ivanovitch, the red-haired woman, the lady's lip curled scornfully.

"A tissue of lies!" she cried. "Those men are the scum of Europe, blackguards of the worst type—the kind Boris has always gathered round him from his boyhood. And the woman—bah!—he has no sister. She is but a mistress he would have long since cast off were it not that she sometimes is of assistance in his wicked plans."

Then Paul told her of the disturbance of the night before, and of his encounter with the woman that very morning.

Natalie clasped Paul's hand—he thrilled beneath the sudden tightening of her fingers.

"Ah!" she breathed, in sudden agitation, "they must in some way have known your mission all the time. I tremble when I think of the peril you were in. Boris is hot-headed, and it must have angered him almost beyond endurance when he knew that he entertained a rival beneath his own roof. Some men, it is said, have entered that evil house never to be seen more by mortal eyes."

Paul tried to quiet her fears. But, though she soon grew calmer, he saw that a great dread still lay upon her. And even when they returned to the house, she started apprehensively at every sudden sound.

Paul found brother Peter to be indeed a most gracious host. He had been educated in England, it appeared, and like Paul was an Oxford man. Indeed, the two found many things to talk about, for Peter well remembered the stories he had heard of Paul's record as an oarsman on the 'Varsity eight—traditions of the sort that are handed down from year to year unto succeeding classes.

But as they talked, Paul noticed that Peter's eyes often rested with a troubled look upon his sister. In fact, it seemed to Paul that a black shadow of direful portent hung over them throughout the meal.



CHAPTER XXII

That afternoon Paul and his love—for a day, as she had told him—walked down the long avenue of pine-trees. And pacing back and forth beneath the shade he told her many things, some of which she knew already.

She could not repress a smile as he recounted to her the manner in which he had walked up and down the terrace at Lucerne, while—though he knew it not—she saw him from her window.

"And now," he said at last, pausing to look down into her dear face, "forsake, I beg of you, this scene of trouble. Leave this strange land, half West, half East, and come away with me to England. There I will try to make you happy, and the day will come, I hope, when you will forget that this threatening evil ever came into your life. I do not know even yet the reasons that seem to demand this marriage with your cousin. Come! it shall not be, even though the Tsar demands it. By marrying me, you will become a British subject, and we then can laugh at any human will that would take you from me."

And then he saw a tear upon her lovely cheek. Like a pearl upon the snow it was. Paul took her in his arms, and her beautiful weary head sank upon his shoulder.

"You weep, dear heart!" he said to her, for she was sobbing softly. "Surely this dreadful union must not be. Come—early to-morrow we will start for Kieff, and then—in a few days more—England and freedom!"

She recovered quickly and shook her head.

"No!" she told him. "That can not be. To-morrow morning you must leave this unhappy place. To stay here would be of no avail. It would only make matters worse. Boris is furious now, I know. And it will only make my lot harder if you remain."

Paul could not move her though he pleaded with her for a long time; and his heart was heavy as they at last drew near the house again.

That night, at dinner, Natalie tried bravely to be gay, but even the brilliancy of her conversation and her brother's effort to entertain his guest did not conceal from Paul the strain of the situation. A young relative, Alexis Vseslavitch by name, was present at the board, having ridden in that afternoon from his estate back in the hills. He was a high-spirited youth and loved dearly to tease his cousin Natalie. But even he saw that for once an unusual restraint seemed upon her.

Afterward, they passed the long evening in the great hall where Paul had waited in the morning. The room was ablaze with candles—and even then the pale lady rang for a servant to bring in more. It was a wild night. A storm had come with the darkness, and outside the wind howled a savage symphony to accompanying crashes of thunder. Mademoiselle sat by her brother, with her hand on the head of an old wolf-hound which frequently looked up at her in dumb adoration as she chattered with the men upon a hundred topics—chiefly travel—for they all loved it.

"Hush, Moka!" she said to the great beast when he sprang up once with a sudden growl. "He does not like the thunder," she explained. "Some people who were not welcome came here once, on a wild night like this, when he was but a puppy. They forced their way into this very room—and the old fellow never has forgotten."

In spite of her soothing words, the old dog was restless, and when, as the hour grew late, Paul said good-night, he noticed that the faithful brute was bristling as with anger at some unseen enemy.

Paul reached his chamber by the light of an ancient oil-lamp held aloft by a servant—a hulking chap of somewhat forbidding appearance. Baxter had already prepared Paul's room for the night and was not waiting for his master. Paul said good-night to his attendant, and had turned his back upon the man—when he heard a shout which appeared to come from the hall below. He stopped short and turned—a movement which he always thought afterward must have saved his life—to receive a glancing, though still a stunning blow, from the butt of a revolver.

Like a log, Paul fell with a crash that shook the room, and knew no more.

* * * * *

Paul was right. The shout did come from below. It was Peter's voice that had sent out that alarming cry.

Paul, it seems, had been gone but a few minutes, when the door of the great hall was flung open and a half-dozen men burst in. It was then that Peter gave a great shout to alarm the household, and in response to which a handful of servants rushed in, Alexander Andrieff, the red-bearded overseer, among them.

All the men were masked, not only their foreheads, but their faces right down to their chins being hidden in black.

The man who led them stepped forward and ordered the servants back; and they retreated.

A couple of armed and masked men sufficed to keep the few domestics penned in the corner. Two others were stationed on the stairs to check any advances in that direction, while two others kept the passages closed against all further comers.

At the head of the intruders the leader walked swiftly towards Peter, who had advanced to meet him.

"Get back, Peter Vseslavitch," said the leader, still in a pleasant and easy voice; "get back, or I will not answer for your life."

Peter checked himself, but craned his head forward.

"By heaven!" he said in a low voice, "I believe that is you, Boris!"

"Never mind who I may be, but keep your tongue still. Unless you wish it to be forever quieted, refrain from mentioning names in my presence.

"Now turn about, if you please, and get back near the wall."

Mademoiselle's brother was a strong, courageous man. But what may one do against such odds? He looked straight and steadily at the veiled eyes of the intruder, and declined to turn about. So for a brief instant they stood.

The bluster of the storm had effectually drowned any noise of the disturbance except for those who had heard Peter's cry for help. Among them was Baxter. At a glance, he had taken in the position of affairs.

Nor did he hesitate for a moment. Breaking into a run, he dashed across the hall toward a wall where hung a heavy sword, an heirloom that had not been used for a hundred years. Before he could be stopped he tore it from its fastenings and started toward the nearest of the ruffians, who brought him to a standstill with a revolver.

The leader noted his progress, and turned about and cried, "Keep that man away. If he moves another foot—shoot!"

Baxter threw one contemptuous glance at Boris (for it was he) and came on. The man hesitated to fire.

"Fire! you fool," shouted Boris, but the man still held his hand and hesitated so long that Baxter had gripped the barrel of his revolver in his left hand before the fellow quite realized what was happening.

If the man had scruples, Boris had none. His revolver spoke quickly, and Baxter, with a little cough, fell forward on his face.

Turning from his butcher's work, Boris whipped round to meet the terror-stricken eyes of Mademoiselle Vseslavitch.

"It is not my fault," he said, "that you have been compelled to look on this."

Then his voice rang out clear and hard.

"Gentlemen," he cried, "I have no desire to create further disturbance. If you will listen to me all will be well."

Turning for a second to Peter, he said, "Get back to the corner of the room."

Peter had no other course but to obey.

Boris next proceeded to deal with the others.

"All of you," he said in a tone of easy command, "all of you get back into the corner, except Mademoiselle."

He watched the retreat through his mask, and when all had crowded together at the end of the room he gave them further orders.

"Let no man move," said he, "if he desires to see another day-break. And if one of you stirs for a quarter of an hour after we leave this room, he will be shot down from yonder window like a dog."

"Now, Mademoiselle," he cried, almost gaily, "take the arm of my fascinating friend here. He will escort you out."

Natalie did not move. Instead she faced him with flaming eyes, the very picture of defiance, and stood there, looking scornfully at Boris and his men.

"Very well," he said. And he motioned to a tall figure a few paces distant. Then a huge red hand seized Natalie roughly by the arm and dragged her to the door.

Peter and his cousin, and the others in the corner hesitated, looking one to another; then Alexis, more bold than the rest, jumped forward, crying, "Never, you dirty scoundrel!" And dashed across the floor.

Boris let him come on, and it said something for the coolness of the man that he did not even fire, but waited till the lad was upon him. Then he swung round, and catching him back of the ear with the butt of his pistol, sent him sprawling senseless to the floor.

After that there was no demonstration of any kind. It was obvious that Boris and his scoundrels had provided against every contingency and had counted on complete success.

They backed toward the door, through which Michael, the pseudo-cousin, had dragged his captive, and Boris was the last to leave the hall. As he stood there, he made a little bow of mockery.

"Gentlemen," he said, "I have to thank you for your hospitality and for your generosity. With your kind permission I will now withdraw."



CHAPTER XXIII

Out into the storm Michael thrust the lady with his murderous hands; and at once, with an ease his great strength gave him, he tossed her on his horse, which was tied with others in the court-yard. Then he swung himself into the saddle, and an instant later, when the rest of the pack came tumbling out into the night, they were off.

One wanton villain—it was the French gutter-snipe, Virot—paused a moment to ride up to a window of the hall and discharge his revolver through the glass. Fortunately his aim was as evil as his intent. Beyond shattering a priceless vase, the bullet did no damage.

The night was black as pitch, and Michael cursed his horse roundly as the willing animal, jumping under the spur, grazed the great gate as he sprang through it. Soon they were all out on the main road, where the thoroughbred that carried a double burden settled down into a long swinging stride that fairly devoured the distance, league after league.

Looking out on the country in the flashes of lightning, Natalie's heart gave a little jump, for she recognized the high hedges between which they were running as those that lined the great highway to the west, which led to the chateau her cousin maintained, a day's journey distant from his shooting lodge near her own family estate. They were taking her there, then! And her heart sank at the thought.