Browne nodded. "Well, the attempt was discovered, and Katherine's father was arrested and sent to Siberia, condemned to imprisonment for life. He was there for many years, but later on he was drafted to the island of Saghalien, on the eastern coast of Siberia, where he now is."
Jimmy nodded. "After that?"
"Well, on the morning of the second day after that dinner at Lallemand's, Miss Petrovitch and Madame Bernstein left for Paris, on some important business, which I now believe to have been connected with the man who was exiled. I followed her, met her, and eventually proposed to her. Like the trump she is, she did her best to make me see that for me to love her was out of the question. Thinking only of me, she tried to put me off by telling me how impossible it all was. But instead of doing what she hoped, it only served to show me what a noble nature the girl possessed."
"She is not rich, I suppose?" asked Jimmy.
"She has not a halfpenny more than three hundred a year assured to her," the other replied; "and she shares that with Madame Bernstein."
"And yet she was willing to give up a hundred and twenty thousand a year, and the position she would have in English society as your wife?"
"She was," said Browne.
"Then all I can say, is," said Jimmy, with considerable conviction, "she must be one in a million. But I interrupted you; I'm sorry. Go on."
"Well," continued Browne, "to make a long story short, she finished by telling me the sad story of her life. Of course she said that she could not possibly marry me, being the daughter of a convict. Then she went on to add that news had lately come to her—how I cannot say—that her father is dying. It seems that he has been in failing health for some years; and at last the terrible climate, the roughness of the living, and the knowledge that he was hopelessly cut off for the rest of his existence from all he held dear in the world, has resulted in a complete collapse. To hope to obtain a pardon from the Russian Government would be worse than futile. All that remains is to get him away."
"But, surely, my dear old Browne," said Jimmy, who had listened aghast, "it cannot be possible that you dream of assisting in the escape of a Russian convict from Saghalien?"