She was going to protest again—I read it in her eyes—but, instead, she paused, and then asked—
“If I care not what you are, will you listen?”
“Readily, readily.”
“I will tell you then,” she said in a low tone, as she withdrew her hands from mine gently. “I am Helga Lavalski.” She looked for some token of recognition of the name from me, as she had on the previous night, and when she saw none her face clouded, and she passed her hand across her eyes as if in pain.
“If I do not recognize the name, it is for the reason I have given you. Until you spoke it last night, I had never heard of it.”
“It is not possible,” she said in low accents of pain. Then, after a pause, she lifted her eyes and continued: “If it must be so, we will pretend that; but the time was when Boris Lavalski was the chosen friend of—of His Majesty, and when the name was oftenest on his lips. They were almost as brothers.”
“You had better tell me all in your own way,” I said.
“It is barely seven years ago that the change came which parted them—a change due to the man I will name presently. My father stood in that man’s path: the one was honest, the other a villain: and by villainous, underhand, infamous methods a charge of treason was laid and proved by perjured liars suborned by the arch-conspirator. You will remember the Nihilist plot at the time?”
I did not, but it was no use interrupting her to repeat my ignorance of the whole affair.
“Well?”