“Most certainly,” I answered, adding, “What you have just told me, Léonie, reveals to me the truth regarding several incidents which have been hitherto unaccountable. Was Wolf actually in your father’s employ?”
“Yes, for years. He was the younger son of old Count Leopold d’Egloffstein-Wolfsburg, whose small estate joined that of Tettau, and, after a wild career in Vienna and Paris, returned home a ne’er-do-well. My father, in order to give him another chance in life, gave him control of a portion of the estates, and, finding him shrewd and clever at management, ultimately made him administrator of the whole, which position he filled up to the time when, after my husband’s death, I discharged him on account of dishonesty and of the constant annoyance to which I was subjected by him. When he left me he vowed that one day I should become his wife, and it seems that in order to gain that end he has been scheming ever since.”
“He is a spy in the French secret service,” I observed thoughtfully, for strange reflections were running through my mind at that instant.
“I have heard so,” she answered. “But that is not actually proved, is it?”
“Absolutely.”
“Is it possible that he himself stole the letter from your desk there? Has he ever been here?”
“Never, to my knowledge. He would never dare to enter here,” I replied. “No, that letter was stolen by one of his accomplices.”
“A woman?”
“Yes, I think it was a woman.”
“A woman whom you love, or have loved, Gerald? Come now, be perfectly frank with me.”