“I—I love him!” she faltered. “Whatever made you suspect that?”
“Well, you know, Leucha, when one loves one cannot conceal it, however careful one may be. There is an indescribable look which always betrays both man and woman. Therefore you may as well confess the truth to me.”
She was silent for a few moments.
“I do confess it,” she faltered at last, with downcast eyes. “We love each other very fondly; but, alas, ours is a dream that can never be realised! Marriage and happiness are not for such as we,” she added, with a bitter sigh.
“Because you have not the means by which to live honestly?” Claire replied, in a voice of deep, heartfelt sympathy, for she had become much attached to the girl.
“That is exactly the difficulty, madame,” was the lady’s maid’s reply. “Both Guy and myself hate this life of constant scheming and of perpetual fear of discovery and arrest. He is a thief by compulsion, and I an assistant because I—well, I suppose I was trained to it so early that espionage and investigation come to me almost as second nature.”
“And yet you can work—and work extremely well,” remarked her royal mistress, with a woman’s tenderness of heart. “I have had many maids from time to time, in Vienna and at Treysa, but I tell you quite openly that you are the handiest and neatest of them all. It is a pity—a thousand pities—that you lead the life of an adventuress, for some day, sooner or later, you must fall into the hands of the police, and after that—ruin.”
“I know,” sighed the girl; “I know—only too well. Yet what can I do? Both Guy and I are forced to lead this life because we are without means. And again, I am very unworthy of him,” she added, in a low, despondent tone. “Guy is, after all, a gentleman by birth; while I, ‘the Ladybird’ as they call me, am merely the daughter of a thief.”
“And yet, Leucha, you are strangely unlike other women who are adventuresses. You love this man both honestly and well, and he is assuredly one worthy a woman’s love, and would, under other circumstances, make you a most excellent husband.”
“If we were not outlaws of society,” she said. “But as matters are it is quite hopeless. When one becomes a criminal, one must, unfortunately, remain a criminal to the end. Guy would willingly cut himself away from my father and the others if it were at all possible. Yet it is not. How can a man live and keep up appearances when utterly without means?”