“None, Monsieur. As I have told you, my mother knew Prince Shulimoff since many years — long before I was born. She was cut off by her own people for that, you will understand?”
“I think so,” said the Duke, gently. “You are the Prince’s daughter.”
“Yes, Monsieur, I am his daughter, and legally so, for my mother was his wife, but he would never acknowledge that. It was a secret marriage made in Paris. I did not know of it myself until my mother told me when she lay dying. It seems that afterwards he made a great marriage here, in Russia, but later, when his wife died, he returned to my mother. She was in great poverty at that time, and he persuaded her to come and live at Romanovsk, but only as the companion of his niece. That proved to be our good fortune afterwards; they would surely have murdered us if they had known the truth.”
“You are, then, the Princess Shulimoff?”
She laughed gaily in the darkness. “Yes, Monsieur, a poor Princess who teaches in a school. It is like a fairy story, is it not, but where is the pumpkin that turned into a coach, and the little silver slippers, and the handsome Prince? One day I think I must write that story. We will call it The Fairy Story of The Princess Marie Lou.”
“What became of your cousin — the Princess Sophie?”
“Ah, that was terrible — “ she broke off suddenly as three loud raps sounded on the cottage door.
Marie Lou unbarred it at once, and Rex staggered in, bearing Simon slung like a sheep across his broad shoulders.
The Duke gave a cry of delight, then asked anxiously in the next breath: “Is he badly wounded?”
“Don’t know — pretty bad, I guess.” Rex gently lowered his burden to the floor. He waved back the girl. “Have a care, he’s bleeding as if he’d been hit in twenty places.”