"The very day whereon I bade good-bye to Leyden."
The words were barely off my lips when Ilga rose to her feet. She stood for a moment with her eyes very wide and her bosom heaving.
"I am convinced," she whispered to me with an odd smile. "I ought not to have needed the proof. I am convinced."
With that she turned a little on one side, and Marston resumed:
"That proves how little Mr. Buckler is acquainted with Lady Tracy."
He spoke as though I had been endeavouring to persuade the company that I was intimate with his sister; he almost challenged me to contradict him. I could not but admire the effrontery of the man in carrying off the exposure of his falsity with so high a head, and I surmised that he had some new contrivance in his mind whereby he might subsequently set himself right with Ilga. One thing, however, was apparent to me: that he had no suspicion of his sister's acquaintance with Count Lukstein.
"It was on the fourteenth that Betty set out for France," he once more declared, and so walked away.
"Where she married most happily three months later," sniggered Culverton. "As you say, madame, it is a very sad story."
The Countess laughed.
"She was not over-constant to her rebel."