Chapter Thirty Four.
The Truth is Told.
At the Quirinale the last State Ball of the season was in full swing.
The Palace was ablaze with light. In the great courtyard, where the sentries paced, there were constant arrivals and departures. All aristocratic and official Rome was there. Smart uniforms were everywhere, and in the great ballroom with its wonderful chandeliers the scene was perhaps the most brilliant of any to be witnessed in the whole of Europe.
In a small salon in the private apartments far removed from the music and glitter of the Court—a delightful and artistic room with white-enamelled walls, and furniture and carpet of old rose—stood Hubert Waldron, who had only arrived back in the Eternal City an hour before. He had hastily changed into uniform, and stood there with Her Royal Highness, Princess Luisa, whose slim figure was a tragic one, notwithstanding her handsome Court gown of white satin, and the black watered ribbon of her decoration in her corsage.
He had just related, as briefly as he could, the exciting chase from Orvieto, a thousand miles, to Paris, and the dramatic meeting in the frowsy little hotel in the Rue d’Amsterdam.
“And here, Lola, are your letters,” he said calmly, drawing from his tunic the envelope which he had sealed in Paris without prying into its contents, save to reassure himself that they were letters in the handwriting of the woman he loved so devotedly.
“My letters!” she gasped, casting her ivory fan aside and eagerly taking them in her gloved and trembling hands. “Then—then you have recovered them!” she cried in sudden glee. “You—you have saved me, Mr Waldron, for to-night I—I confess to you, my friend—I had the fixed intention to end it all. I could not bear to live and face the terrible exposure, for I knew not from day to day if one of the scurrilous papers in Paris might print my letters—the confession of a woman who, though a Princess of a Royal House, was also a spy, because she was fooled—tricked into love!”
“Lola,” he said, still speaking earnestly and very calmly, “you need have no further fear of that man. He came near bringing you to ruin—nay to death. But the peril is now at an end.”