You, my friendly readers, each of you—be you man or woman, love to-day, or have loved long ago. Your love is human, your affection firm, strong and undying, differing in no particular to the emotions experienced by the peasant in the cottage or the princess of the blood-royal.
I looked at the little figure on the rustic seat at my side, and all my sympathy went out to her.
I have loved once, just as you have, my reader; and I knew, alas! what she suffered, and how she foresaw opened before her the grave of all her hopes, of all her aspirations, of all her love.
She was committing the greatest sin pronounced by the unwritten law of her Imperial circle. She loved a commoner! To go forward, to speak and save her nation from the depredations of that unscrupulous camarilla, the Council of Ministers, would mean to her the abandonment of the young Englishman she loved so intensely and devotedly—the sacrifice, alas! of all she held most dear in life by the betrayal of her identity.
Chapter Thirty.
Reveals the Gulf.
Having been introduced to Mrs Holbrook—a pleasant-fated old lady in a white-laced cap with mauve ribbons—I made excuse to “Miss Stebbing” to leave, and took train a quarter of an hour later back to St. Fillans. From the village post-office I sent an urgent wire to Hartwig to go again to Lower Clapton, see Danilovitch, explain how Her Highness had discovered the plot against her, and assure him that if any attempt were male, proof of his treachery would be placed at once before his “comrades.”
I called at the hotel and inquired for Mr Gregory, but was informed that he was out fishing. But though I lunched there and waited till evening, yet he did not return.