“If I could,” she said at last, “I would assist her. But I cannot see that it is possible.”
“You can do so by explaining your own position to me,” I said. “Despicable though it may seem, the ghastly truth is, that you are actually a spy in the service of France. If you do not seek to clear yourself now, you may be condemned with your accomplices Wolf, Bertini, and Yolande de Foville.”
“That woman!” she cried quickly. “It was she who plotted against you.”
“Then you have met her!” I exclaimed, surprised at this revelation.
I had never believed that they had met.
“Yes,” Edith replied, “I met her in London; and while dining one night at the Carlton with Wolf and Bertini she told me how she had misled you into the belief that she loved you passionately, in order to obtain from you certain official information which had been of the greatest use to them at the Quai d’Orsay. She little dreamed that I knew you and loved you, and the three of them laughed heartily over what they called your gullibility.”
I pursed my lips, for I now saw that woman’s motive in responding to my declaration of love long ago. At the time I would not believe the whispered condemnation of the Countess and her daughter as secret agents, but of late the truth had been shown me all too plainly.
“And did she mention an incident last year in Paris as the result of which she nearly lost her life?” I inquired.
“Yes; she told us a long story of how a mysterious attempt had been made to poison her in her own apartment in Paris by some subtle poison being placed upon the gum of the envelopes in her escritoire. She wrote a letter, and licked the envelope in order to seal it, when she was seized suddenly by excruciating pains, followed by coma and a state so nearly resembling death that even the doctors were at first deceived. Only by an antidote administered by an English doctor—a friend of yours, I believe—was her life saved. Because of your efforts she had, she said, been seized by remorse, and ceased to mislead you further, because of the debt of gratitude she owed you.”
“Very kind indeed of her,” I laughed.