“Humph, haven’t I spoken clearly enough? Cannot you guess why little Sasha has been put under arrest?”
She understood clearly now, and drew a deep breath, born of fear.
“Paul has discovered——?”
“I fear so.”
There followed a significant silence, during which both sat looking at each other.
“Who has betrayed us?” she said at last.
“No one. It was an accident. You know—you have reason for knowing—that there is in existence a weighty document containing the autograph signatures of those who have pledged themselves to——”
She interrupted him with a gesture of impatience.
“Why tell me what I know already?”
“Our dear friend, Count Pahlen,” continued Benningsen, naming the Foreign Minister, next to the Czar the most powerful man in the Empire, “was the person to whom we all agreed to entrust our common document, a document so precious that he durst not keep it at his bureau, locked in an escritoire, lest it should be detected by some prying secretary. He therefore carried it about on his person.”