“I am telling you everything. He is an exiled Pole—Count Primus Noveschkoff—and for his part in a Polish plot he was exiled and beggared. He is a great violinist, and I saw my way when I learnt that the Duchess Stephanie had become enamoured of him and he of her, strange as that may seem to you, who know her age and lack of personal charms. I helped him to secure her for his wife for I knew the Court would eventually pardon and ennoble him, and that through her I could eventually gain the Emperor’s ear. The obstacles to such a match were of course countless, but I was not daunted, and you know the scheme that I laid—to gain the papers we have obtained—and how it has fared.”
“And M. Paul Drexel?” Her face clouded at the question, and she paused.
“I have told you once before I would do anything to gain my end.”
“But how comes such a man to be on the scene at all?”
“You are interested then in the story I have had to force upon you?” she asked with one of her searching, half-triumphant, half-defiant glances.
“I am intensely interested in this part of your story,” I answered earnestly. “What is he really to you? How comes he here? Do you mean that you would marry such a man, despising him as you do, to gain your purpose?”
My string of questions, and the vehemence with which I asked them, seemed to please her, for she smiled.
“I would do even that—if it were necessary. He has forced himself upon us, and his silence on certain things—why should I not tell you, I have told you all,” she broke off. “I have trusted you.”
“I know that.”
“He knew M. Boreski’s real character and past, and it was in his power to checkmate everything by denouncing him to the Government. He had to be silenced, and his price was—the promise of my hand. I paid it, only thankful he made it so light and did not insist on an immediate marriage. I should have married him—then;” she dropped her voice at the last word and paused before it.