“Explain how you managed to elude Dmitri’s vigilance in Eastbourne.”
“Well, on that evening in Eastbourne I induced Miss West, Gladys Finlay and Dmitri to walk on to the station, and I entered a shop. When I came cut, Dick joined me. We slipped round a corner, and after hurrying through a number of back streets found ourselves again on the Esplanade. We walked along to Pevensey, whence that night we took train to Hastings, and arrived in London just before eleven. At midnight we left Euston for Scotland, and next morning found ourselves in hiding here. I was awfully sorry to give poor Miss West such a fright, and I knew that Hartwig would be moving heaven and earth to discover me. But I thought it best to escape and lie quite low until your return. I telegraphed to you guardedly to the British Consulate in Moscow, hoping that you might receive the message as you passed through.”
“I was only half an hour in Moscow, and did not leave the station,” I replied. “Otherwise I, no doubt, should have received it.”
“To telegraph to Russia was dangerous,” she remarked. “The Secret Police are furnished with copies of all telegrams coming from abroad, and Markoff is certainly on the alert.”
“No doubt he is,” I said. “As you well know, he is desperately anxious to close your lips. Now that poor Marya is dead, you alone are in possession of his secret—whatever it may be.”
“And for that reason,” she said slowly, her fine eyes fixed straight before her across the blue waters of the loch, “he has no doubt decided that I, too, must die.”
“Exactly; therefore it now remains for Your Highness to reveal to the Emperor the whole truth concerning those letters and the secret which resulted in Marya de Rosen’s arrest and death. It is surely your duly! You have no longer to respect the promise of secrecy which you gave her. Her death must be avenged—and by you—and you alone,” I added very quietly and in deep earnestness. “You must see the Emperor—you must tell him the whole truth in the interests of his own safety—in the interests, also, of the whole nation.” My dainty little companion remained silent, her eyes still fixed, her slim white fingers toying nervously with her skirt.
“And forsake Dick?” she asked presently in a low voice which trembled with emotion. “No, Uncle Colin. No, don’t ask me!” she urged. “I really can’t do that—I really can’t do that. I—I love him far too well.”
I sighed. And of a sudden, ere I was aware of it the girl, torn by conflicting emotions, burst into a flood of tears.
There, at her side I sat utterly at a loss what to say in order to mitigate her distress; for too well I knew that the pair loved each other truly, nay, madly. I knew that the love of an Imperial Grand Duchess of the greatest family in Europe is just as intense, just is passionate, just as fervent as that of a commoner, be she only a typist, a seamstress, or a serving-maid. The same feelings, the same emotions, the same passionate longings and tenderness; the same loving heart bests beneath the corsets of the patrician as beneath those of the plebeian.