CHAPTER THIRTY
CONCLUSION
About ten days afterwards I one morning received by post a brief note from Guertin, written from the Préfecture in Paris, urging me to go at once to the Victoria Hotel at Varenna, on the Lake of Como, where, if I waited in the name of Brown, my patience would be rewarded.
And there, sure enough, six days later, as I sat one evening in my private sitting-room, the door suddenly opened and my well-beloved, in a dark travelling gown, sprang forward and embraced me, sobbing for very joy.
Can I adequately describe the happiness of that reunion. Of what I uttered I have no recollection, for I held her closely in my arms as I kissed her hot tears away.
A man stood by—a tall, silent, gentlemanly man, whose hair was grey, and whose face as he advanced beneath the strong light showed traces of disguise.
“I am Philip Poland—Sonia’s father,” he exclaimed in a low voice. Whereupon I took the hand of the escaped prisoner, and expressed the utmost satisfaction at that meeting, for he had risked his liberty to come there to me.
“Sonia has told me everything,” he said; “and I can only regret that those blackguards have treated you and her as they have. But Guertin, who is a humane man, even though he be a detective, has tracked them down, and only yesterday I heard Du Cane—the man who made that false charge against myself, and stepped into my shoes; the man who intended that my poor girl should marry that young scoundrel Forbes—has been discovered in Breslau, and is being extradited to England.”