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

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

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

“For what reason?”

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

“Yes, I remember.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Why?” I inquired in surprise.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes. But he’s about to be married.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter Thirty Five
Confession

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

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

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

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

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

Next instant we were face to face.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Why?”

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

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

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