“But I forget that you do not yet know my history. Listen. I will tell it to you.”
CHAPTER VIII.
“Brave hearts and willing hands may foil even Satan himself.”
“I had,” continued madame, “father, mother, sister, and two brothers, all of whom were sacrificed to the Moloch of oppression: My father’s estates were confiscated, and his castle was handed into the possession of his betrayer, to whom was also given a title, and who was henceforth known as Count Karenieff. I, a babe in arms, was surely spared in fiendish irony of purpose, and was consigned to the care of a childless couple in St. Petersburg, who had strict injunctions to bring me up as their own offspring, and who, in consideration of the small income they received with me, kept the secret of my birth until I was nineteen. Then Paul Galtioff died, and his wife Marie, having confidence in my discretion, and a premonition that her own end was not far off, showed me my true vocation. She told me of all that my relatives had suffered, and how my mother had been subjected to imprisonment, torture, the lash and personal degradation because she would say nothing that would incriminate my father. I have often since heard of the horrors of St. Peter and Paul. In your country they speak with bated breath of banishment to Siberia as the extreme compass of human suffering. We know that it is the one ray of hope which gleams before the eyes of those who are denounced. Complete freedom will never be theirs again, but there are gradations in even the lowest ruts of misery, and I would pray for the devil himself to be saved from the anguish endured by those condemned to the fortress.
“What wonder that, thinking of all these things, I should pant for vengeance, and that I should devote all my future energies to foiling some of the plots against my compatriots! But Marie Galtioff infused in me some of her own caution and cunning. Both she and her husband had belonged to revolutionary societies for years without once exciting suspicion of their loyalty. Henceforth I derived my chief satisfaction in hoodwinking our oppressors. I habitually met kindred spirits, among them being Feodor Kominski, who afterward became my husband. Perhaps it was well for him that death claimed him soon after Feo was born. His spirit was too ardent to have worked in the dark much longer.
“For some years after I became a widow I supported myself in various ways. Then my opportunity came from a quarter least expected. A member of our society, who possessed great influence at court, where he was supposed to be one of the most loyal supporters of the throne, was asked to recommend some lady who would make an efficient government spy. He nominated me for the office. The pay was on a princely scale. The social advantages attending the post were great. There was no circle deemed too high for my entry into it on apparent terms of equality with the most exclusive. My credentials were indisputable, and my own conversational ability did the rest. I became a general favorite in society, and might have been happy, could I but have faithfully performed the day’s duty for which I was paid. My employers gave me every opportunity of spying and denouncing suspected persons. I denounced a good many when I saw that their discovery by others was inevitable. But I always contrived to let them have sufficient warning to escape before the bolt fell. I was doing good work for my people, under the mask of an alien to patriotism. Above all, I was occupying a place which will soon, I fear, be occupied by a substitute whose aims and aspirations will not be as mine have been.
“When I was in St. Petersburg in the early spring, Count Karenieff, the son of my father’s old enemy, was introduced to me, and I found it a terribly difficult matter to be civil to him. It was, however, necessary that I should curb the anger which his very name aroused in me. But when the caitiff’s whelp actually dared to propose marriage to me, my scorn and hatred over-stepped the bounds of prudence, and my rejection was so fierce as to astonish him.
“‘I see, madame,’ he said, his face glittering with the evil with which his heart is full to bursting. ‘I understand you better than you understand yourself. You see in me a man of strong feeling, and you think it necessary to use strong words with me, in order to drive me from my purpose. But I tell you that your beauty has aroused my passions, and I will gratify them even though you raised ten thousand objections. You are so unnecessarily vehement that I conclude you have a more favored lover. One, moreover, who resembles me not at all. And you think to marry him? I swear you shall marry none but me! Nay, if you do not beware, I will bring that about which shall make you turn to me for help, which shall make you only too happy to throw yourself into my arms and yield yourself to my embraces. As for your lover, I shall find him, and I shall silence him, never fear. His golden hair shall turn gray with horror, and his blue eyes shall become dim with anguish.’
“‘He has neither golden hair nor blue eyes,’ I cried, trembling with the awe the man’s fierce words evoked.
“‘Thank you,’ was his reply. ‘I thought that, as you seemed so disgusted with my proposal, your inamorato must be my antithesis. Now I am sure of it. If it had not been so, you would have been glad to permit me to retain an erroneous opinion. Good-day, madame. Perhaps, when next we meet, you will have become wiser.’