“There’s a foreign man outside, sir, and I think he’s asking for you; but I can’t make out half he says,—not even his name, though it sounds like Miskyploff!”
“Mishka!” I shouted, making for the door.
Mishka it was, grim, gaunt, and travel-stained; and as he gripped my hands I knew, without a word spoken, that Loris was dead.
I led him in, and he started slightly when he saw Anne, who stared at him with a queer expression of half-recognition. She knew who he was, for I had told her a good deal about him; though we had all agreed it was quite unnecessary that she should know the whole story of my experiences in Russia; there were a lot of details I’d never given even to her father and Jim.
She recovered herself almost instantly, and held out her hand to him with a gracious smile, saying in German:
“Welcome to England, Herr Pavloff! I have heard much of you, and have much to thank you for.”
He bowed clumsily over the hand, with the deference due to a princess, and watched her as she passed out of the room, his rugged face strangely softened.
“So, she is safe, after all,” he said when the door was closed. “We all hoped so, but we did not know; that is one reason why you were never told. For if she were dead what need to tell you; and also—but I will come to that later. There is a marvellous resemblance; but it is often so with twins.”
“Twins!” I ejaculated; and yet I think I’d known it, at the back of my mind, ever since the night of my return to England; only Pendennis had spoken so decidedly about his only child. “Why, Herr Pendennis himself doesn’t know that!”