“Ah! darling,” I cried. “I never for one moment doubted you! Yet I admit that the circumstances once or twice looked very black and suspicious.”
“Alas! I could not prevent it,” she declared; “I left you and joined Dad at the Coliseum, because I went in fear of some further attempt being made upon us, and I felt you and I would be safe if I were with him. He had no idea when he met the others at Stamford that Forbes and Reckitt and Du Cane had effected that coup with the Archduchess’s jewels.”
“No. I had no idea of it,” said Poland. “My meeting with them was one of farewell. I had already severed my connection with them three years ago, before my arrest.”
And then, after some further explanations, I clasped my loved one in my arms and openly repeated my declaration of fervent love and fond affection.
Of the rest, what need be said?
Sonia is now very happy, either down at Carrington or at Wilton Street, for the black clouds which overshadowed the earlier days of our marriage have rent asunder, and given place to all the sunshine and brightness of life and hope.
No pair could be happier than we.
Twice we have been to Athens as the guest of the tall, grey-haired Englishman who is such a thorough-going cosmopolitan, and who lives in Greece for the sake of the even climate and the study of its antiquities. No one in the Greek capital recognizes Mr. Wilfrid Marsh as the once-famous Louis Lessar.
And dear old Jack Marlowe, still our firm and devoted friend, is as full of good-humoured philosophy as ever, and frequently our visitor. He still leads his careless existence, and is often to be seen idling in the window of White’s, smoking and watching the passers-by in St. James’s Street.
You who read the newspapers probably know how Arnold Du Cane, alias Pennington, alias Winton, was recently sentenced at the Old Bailey to fifteen years, and the two young Frenchmen, Terassier and Brault, to seven years each, for complicity in the robbery on the Scotch express.