The French window of Olifant’s study opened, and he came down the gravelled path towards her, a letter in his hand. His face was serious. She rose to meet him.
“I don’t know whether I ought to show you this—but, perhaps later you might blame me if I didn’t.”
She uttered a little cry which stuck in her throat.
“Alexis?”
“Yes.”
The eagerness with which she grasped the letter brought a touch of pain into his eyes. Surely she loved the man still.
“I’m afraid it gives less than news of him,” said he.
But, already reading the letter, she gave no heed to his words.
The letter was from Warsaw, and it ran:
“Sir, “I was commissioned by my friend, Mr. John Briggs, to communicate with you should anything befall him. Now something must have befallen him, because he has failed to keep with me very definite engagements into which he had entered with the utmost good faith and enthusiasm. He was to start on his journey hither, to join the Polish service, on a certain day. He was furnished with railway tickets and passports; also, on the night before his departure, with a letter to friends in Prague where he was to await my coming, and with a letter to friends in Warsaw, in case political exigencies should delay my arrival in Prague. The Prague letter has not been delivered, nor has Mr. Briggs appeared in Warsaw. Nor have I received from him any explanatory communication. That he should have changed his mind at the last moment is incredible, as his more than zealous intentions cannot be questioned.