“An oath!”
“Yes. I know it was purely from love that you married me, enveloped in mystery as I was; and, then, when you saw me in the Dene, and—and—thought me untrue—ah—you surely should have known me better than that. You know how I love you; and yet you suspected me!” she cried passionately.
“Don’t let’s talk of that,” I said, impatiently.
“When I have told you,” she continued, her eyes filling with tears, “you will no longer believe me Valse, even though I—your wife—have stained my Hands with crime!”
“What!” I cried, in amazement, “you?”
“Ah, no,” she answered, “and yet mine is a horrible crime. Listen! Years ago, when I was a little child, my father, Count Nicholas, held a responsible position at the Court of the Czar at Petersburg. His closest friend was Sergius Orselska—the man you know as Hertzen—his half-brother. His son, Demetrius, and I were playmates.”
“But what of Boris. The man who gave evidence to-day?”
“He is my brother. When the Russo-Turkish war broke out, my father, who was an officer, was placed in command of a troop, Boris having in the meantime joined the Cossacks. The Count served with distinction throughout the campaign; but, alas! after the fall of Plevna, he received news that my brother had been killed in an engagement with some insurgents in Georgia.
“Overcome with sorrow, my father retired from the army, and took me to live in a gloomy old house in the Njazlov at Warsaw. While we were leading a somewhat secluded existence the revolutionary movement sprang up in Poland; the people commenced their struggle for freedom, and the propaganda took root with alarming rapidity. My father, a loyal subject of the Czar, believed that his warmest friend, Serge Orselska, held views similar to his own, but, as I afterwards discovered, he was mistaken. This half-brother was a scheming scoundrel, who having allied himself with the Terrorists, determined upon making it a lucrative business by becoming a police spy, so that he could give secret information regarding the conspirators. In this he had more than one object in view. My father had occasion to travel to Petersburg on business connected with his estate, and remained there several weeks. On the day following his return to Warsaw the grand coup was made, and the Czar was assassinated by a bomb thrown at his sleigh. The world was convulsed. My father, honest loyalist that he was, regarded this action of the Nihilists most unfavourably.
“Yet as soon as Alexander the Third had succeeded the dead Emperor my poor father was arrested, conveyed to Petersburg, and charged with being implicated in the assassination! Though the accusation was utterly unfounded, the perjured evidence was much against him. He was found guilty, and condemned to Siberian hard labour for life. I was in Court and heard sentence pronounced. Ah! Grand Dieu! Shall I ever forget that day?