“At an end—how?” she asked.
“I begged of you to leave all to me—that I would settle the account with him. I have brought you back your letters,” he said, very gravely. “You need have no further fear, because the scoundrel who made such dastardly pretence of loving you, Lola, is dead!”
“Dead!” she gasped with startled, wide-open eyes.
“Yes; shot dead by the Paris police who had wanted him for espionage. He fired at them, and they retaliated in self-defence.”
“Then my enemy is dead!” she exclaimed in a whisper, standing motionless, her big, expressive eyes fixed straight before her.
“Yes. The peril which threatened you, Lola, and the very existence of the Italian nation, is at an end.”
“And you, Mr Waldron,” she cried in a voice broken by emotion, turning to him suddenly with hand outstretched, “you have risked your own life and have averted a war in Europe, of which I, in my unfortunate ignorance, was so nearly the cause.”
“Because your actions and your movements have been—well, just a little too unconventional,” he laughed, bowing gallantly over her outstretched hand and kissing it fervently.
She knew the truth. She knew how devotedly the Englishman loved her. And she, in return, reciprocated his affection. Had she not, in that moment of her ecstasy, responded to his well-remembered kisses?
He was holding her hand, gazing long and deeply into those fathomless eyes of hers. He was about to speak—again to confess to her his great all-consuming passion, when a hand was placed upon the door knob and they sprang apart, as of a sudden His Majesty the King, a brilliant figure in his uniform and glittering decorations, entered.