"You can tell me about her," Isobel said gently. "That is what I have been hoping for!"
"A little, a very little," he answered, "and more to-night, if you will. I have already written to Mr. Greatson, and I meant in a few hours to tell him everything. But I would have you know this, Isobel, and remember it always. Your mother was a holy woman. For my sake, for the sake of the love she bore me, she abandoned a great position. She broke down all the barriers of race, and all the conventions of a lifetime. She lost every friend she had in the world; she even, perhaps, in some measure, neglected her duty to you. Yet you were seldom out of her thoughts, and her last words committed you to my distant care. I have, perhaps, ill-fulfilled her charge, Isobel. Yet I have been watching over you sometimes when you have not known it."
"You were my saviour once," she said, "you and Arnold here, when I sorely needed help."
"I came from America at a moment's notice," he said, "when it seemed to me that you might need my help. I broke the greatest contract I had ever signed, and I placed my liberty, if not my life, at the mercy of your wonderful police system. But those things count for little. I have been forced, Isobel, to leave you very much to yourself. You come of a race who would regard any association with me as defilement. And there is always the chance that you may be able to take your proper position in the world. That is why it has been my duty to keep away from you, why I have been forced to leave to others what I would gladly have done myself. To-night you will understand everything."
"Nothing that you can tell me of my family or myself," she answered, "will ever make me forget that, whereas of them I know nothing, you have been my guardian angel. It was you who rescued me from the one person in this world of whom I have been miserably, hatefully afraid. It was not my family who saved me. It was you!"
A shrill bell was ringing outside. We heard the commotion of hurrying footsteps, the call-boy's summons, the creaking of moving scenery. Feurgéres glanced at the watch which stood upon his table. His manner seemed to undergo a sudden change. The man no longer revealed himself.
"The curtain is going up," he said. "I can stay with you but two minutes longer. I am coming to see Mr. Greatson to-night, Isobel, after the performance, and I wish to see him alone. This is at once our meeting and our farewell."
"Our farewell!" she repeated doubtfully. "Surely you are not going to leave us—so soon! You cannot mean that?"
"To-morrow," he said, "I leave for St. Petersburg. My engagement there has been made many months ago. But even if it were not so, dear child, our ways through life must always lie far apart. If the necessity for it had not existed, I should not have left you to the care of—of even Mr. Greatson. To be your guardian, Isobel, would not be seemly. That you will better understand—to-morrow."
"Indeed!" she protested, "I would sooner hear it now from your own lips—if, indeed, it must be so!"