"If your disguise were only as good as your acting, Alexis, not a soul in Russia would suspect you. Oh, I see what you mean," she cried, a look of intelligence breaking over her features. "I forgot. Of course, I am compromising your disguise by thus speaking to you. I am sorry. It was my love for you made me thoughtless, when I should have been thoughtful. I will go away." She turned on me such a look of genuine grief that it melted my scepticism.
"There is really some strange mistake," I said, speaking much more gently. "At first I thought you were intentionally mistaking me for someone else; for what object I knew not. But I see now the error was involuntary. I give you my honour, Madam, that you are under a complete mistake if you take me for any relative of your own. I am an Englishman, as I say, and I arrived in Moscow only last night, and am leaving for St Petersburg by the next express train. I am afraid, if you persist in your mistake, it may have unpleasant consequences for you. Hence my plain speech. But I am what I say."
As I finished, I raised my hat and stood that she might convince herself of her blunder.
She looked at me with the most careful scrutiny, even walking round to get a view of my figure. Then she came back and looked into my face again; and I could see that she was still unconvinced.
"It is impossible," she said, under her breath. "If I allow for the difference your beard and moustache would make, you are my brother."
"I am Hamylton Tregethner," I said, and I took out my pocket-book and shewed her my passport to Paris, Vienna, Moscow, "and travelling on the Continent."
"These things can be bought—or made," she said. Then she seemed to understand how she had committed herself with me, if I were really a stranger, and I saw her look at me with fear, doubt, and speculation on her pretty expressive face.
She sighed and lifted her hands as if in half despair.
"Madam, you have my word as an Englishman that not a syllable of what you have said shall pass my lips." The bright glance of gratitude she threw me inspired me to add:—"If I can be of any help in this matter, you may command me absolutely."
She gave me a little stiff look, and I thought I had offended her: but the next moment a light of eagerness took its place.