"Ah, that accounts for the delay that has occurred in their pushing on the matter," said Philip, more to himself than to her. "August is the legal holiday month, and Anstice, the District Judge, before whom the examination, if there be one, would be made, is not due here for another week. We have therefore seven clear days before us, in any event, without counting on the chapter of accidents for further delays. Now tell me, who was it brought the application for arrest?"
"Count Vladimir Mellikoff," replied Mrs. Newbold. "Oh, Philip," she added, her eyes flashing, "is he not a coward, and does not his seem coward's work, when one remembers how he was received and trusted?"
Mr. Tremain answered by a gesture of his hand.
"One would rather not think of that," he said; "let us try and put aside personalities, and look at the case only from an outside point of view. You may be very sure Count Mellikoff wasted neither time, nor the opportunities afforded him by your hospitality, to work out his nefarious scheme. But what I wish to ask you, Esther, will, I know, grieve you to answer; still I must clear up one or two points in my own mind, before I see her. Who was the person murdered; and why is she suspected of complicity in the crime?"
He spoke sternly, and the hard lines of his face appeared in greater prominence. Esther looked at him half frightened.
"He believes her guilty," she thought, with quick and decisive perception. "How terrible! But it is so, I see it in his face." Then she said aloud, and with a slowness that was almost hesitancy: "The name of the murdered man was Count Stevan Lallovich; but I can't tell you—that is—at least I don't know, how it is that they prove Patricia to be mixed up in the horrible affair."
Mr. Tremain noted her hesitancy and the sudden reserve that had come over her; he put it down to the knowledge of some facts she was wilfully withholding from him, and this suspicion added weight in the scale, that balanced so evenly between Patricia's innocence and guilt.
When he next spoke, his voice was even colder and harder than before.
"There is something very mysterious in the whole affair," he said, looking Esther straight in the eyes; "it seems inconceivable that an American citizen should be arrested in her own country, on the charge of a foreign agent, for a murder committed in a foreign land, on a foreign subject. Of course Count Mellikoff has no power to arrest of himself; he must therefore, have laid sufficiently compromising evidence before our authorities to obtain a warrant, and an officer to execute it. As it appears now the whole affair reads more like a midsummer madness than anything else; but a madness pregnant with serious complications and results. Who was this Stevan Lallovich, Esther, and did—she—know him?"
"He was a cousin, or a relation, or a near connection of the Russian Tsar's," answered Mrs. Newbold, still avoiding Philip's eyes. "I heard Patricia—I mean I believe she did once admit knowing him when she was in St. Petersburg. He was a great swell there, I am told, and the favourite of the Court society. I don't know anything more about it, Philip, indeed I don't. And oh, it is all so horrible, and so dreadful, how can you go on asking questions in that cold way? It's just as if you admitted to yourself that there was a possibility of her—her knowing something about the death of this miserable man. Oh, Philip, how can you doubt her? How can you, when you think of her in prison, and remember it is Patricia, our own Patricia, they accuse of this terrible crime?"