"This was refused.
"Then he had the impudence to try and bargain with me, offering to keep silence for a certain sum. Finally he laid claim to the diamonds in the steel safe, which he stated were his father's property. My answer to his requests and fraudulent claims was to have him placed on board a steamer bound for Europe.
"Then he threatened me with his life-long vengeance. Leagued with a professional agitator named Razzaro, he commenced to undermine my authority with great subtilty, till in the end my simple people who once had loved me and my family grew to hate me, and to look upon Waldemar, even the Royalists, as a much-wronged person.
"You know the rest; it is written in the history of the world. My people rose in rebellion. I was dethroned, and with one single faithful companion, the Baroness d'Altenstein, fled to Europe in the warship of a friendly nation.
"But before the storm burst I had sent to Europe the steel safe and its precious contents, the diamonds.
"For some reasons, I have many times since wished that it had sunk to the bottom of the Atlantic.
"For years I lived in one of the fairest cities of Europe with my faithful d'Altenstein, and for those years the Duke Waldemar left me in peace, being, I suppose, occupied in some other villainy.
"But suddenly he commenced his importunities again, and made one dastardly attempt, through others, to steal the safe from the bankers' vaults in which it lay, but this was frustrated.
"Harried to death by his persecution, I consulted a learned English judge whom I met in Society in Paris, Sir Henry Anstruther, your father," she added, turning to me, "and it has always seemed to me a providential coincidence that in my need I should also have turned to you.
"I asked this good English judge, without disclosing my secret, what he considered the most effectual mode for a woman to adopt to hide herself entirely from the world and her friends. I said I was very curious to know what his long experience had taught him in that respect.