“Yes, and I don’t know if you can help me, but Simon came over to Moscow just after you left England, and I thought — er — well, I thought that it was just on the cards that he might have come to see you when he got here.”
“You are right, Mistaire Eaton; your frien’ came to me, not once, but many times.”
Richard gave a sigh of relief. “Thank the Lord for that. I’ve been quite worried about him — you’ll be able to tell me, then, where I can find him?”
“Please to sit down, Mistaire Eaton. I know, I think, where your frien’ is, but ’e is in bad trouble — the poor Simon — ’ave you knowledge of what ’e came to Russia for?”
An anxious look came into Richard Eaton’s eyes. “Yes,” he said, slowly; “yes, I know about Van Ryn.”
“It was I, then, ’oo obtain for ’im the information that ’is frien’ is in the prison at Tobolsk — fool that I was! — after, ’e go there with ’is other frien’, then there comes trouble — of all that this child can tell you better than I.” She waved her hand in the direction of Marie Lou.
For the first time Richard really looked at the younger of the two women. With a little shock he realized that she was one of the loveliest people that he had ever seen. Even the heavy boots, the woollen hose and the coarse garments could not conceal her small, perfectly proportioned limbs, or the stains of travel and the tousled hair disguise her flower-like face.
As Richard looked at her the ravages of sickness, sleeplessness and anxiety seemed to drop away. There remained the laughing blue eyes, the delicate skin, and the adorable little pointed chin.
She began to speak slowly in a musical voice, with just the faintest suspicion of a delicious accent; telling of her meeting with the three friends in the forest, of their adventures on the way to Romanovsk, as they had been told to her, then of the anxious days they had lived through since, and of their forced descent at Kiev.
“And you mean to say that you have come all the way from Kiev alone?” Richard asked her.