To Claire the plot was now revealed as clear as day. She had, however, never dreamed that Hinckeldeym and Stuhlmann would descend to such depths of villainy as this. Their spies had been at work, without a doubt. She had been watched, and the watchers, whoever they were, had evidently established the identity of the two men to whom she owed so very much. And then Hinckeldeym, with that brutal unscrupulousness that distinguished him, had conceived the hellish plot to create a fresh scandal regarding the jewel thief Guy Bourne and herself.
The man who had risked his life for hers had now lost his liberty solely on her account. It was cruel, unjust, inhuman! Night and day she had prayed to her Maker for peace and for protection from the thousand pitfalls that beset her path in that great complex world of which she was almost as ignorant as little Ignatia herself. Yet it seemed as though, on the contrary, she was slowly drifting on and on to a ruin that was irreparable and complete.
She felt herself doubting, but instantly her strong faith reasserted itself. Yes, God would hear her; she was sure He would. She was a miserable sinner, like all other women, even though she were queen of an earthly kingdom. He would forgive her; He would also forgive those two men who stood charged with the crime of theft. God was just, and in Him she still placed her implicit trust. In silence, as the train rushed southward, she again appealed to Him for His comfort and His guidance.
Her bounden duty was to try and save the men who had been her friends, even at risk to herself. Their friendliness with her had been their own betrayal. Had they disappeared from Paris with her jewels they would still have been at liberty.
Yet what could she do? how could she act?
Twenty years’ penal servitude was the sentence which Leucha declared would be given her father if tried in England, while upon Bourne the sentence would not be less than fifteen years, having in view his list of previous convictions. In Germany, with the present-day prejudice against the English, they would probably be given even heavier sentences, for, according to Mr Gore-Palmer, an attempt was to be made to make an example of them.
Ah! if the world only knew how kind, how generous those two criminals had been to her, a friendless, unhappy woman, who knew no more of the world than a child in her teens, would it really judge them harshly, she wondered. Or would they receive from the public that deep-felt compassion which she herself had shown them?
Many good qualities are, alas! nowadays dead in the human heart; but happily chivalry towards a lonely woman is still, even in this twentieth century, one of the traits of the Englishman’s character, be he gentleman or costermonger.
Alone in her room that night, she knelt beside the bed where little Ignatia was sleeping so peacefully, and besought the Almighty to protect her and her child from this last and foulest plot of her enemies, and to comfort those who had been her friends. Long and earnestly she remained in prayer, her hands clasped, her face uplifted, her white lips moving in humble, fervent appeal to God.
Then when she rose up she pushed back the mass of fair hair from her brow, and paced the room for a long time, pondering deeply, but discerning no way out of the difficulties and perils that now beset her. The two accused men would be condemned, while upon her would be heaped the greatest shame that could be cast upon a woman.