Knowing, as I did, how the Tzar’s emissaries followed and captured by all manner of subtle devices those suspected of revolutionary conspiracy, I was again convinced, as I had been two years ago, that Sonia was a conspirator against the life of his Majesty. She certainly was not a common criminal. As she chatted to me, young, refined, sad-eyed, there were in her face unmistakable traces of anxiety and suffering. Finding that she absolutely refused to say anything further regarding the woman I adored, I began to question her as to her own happiness and future.
“Ah,” she sighed, “I am lonely, dull, and unhappy now that my father is no longer alive. Together we shared months of terrible hardship, of semi-starvation, hiding in the frozen wilds of the North, and ever pushing forward through that great lonely land towards our goal of freedom. Often and often we were compelled to exist on roots and leaves, and more than once we were compelled to face death,” and she shuddered. “The recollection of that terrible journey is to me like some hideous nightmare, for to escape detection we often travelled by night, in terror of the wolves, and guided only by the brilliant stars high in the bright, frosty sky. The knowledge of our fate if caught—the mines in far Siberia—held us in dread and hastened our footsteps. Thus, clad only in tattered rags, we went forward shivering, knowing that to halt meant certain death. Not until after three long months of suffering did we reach Stockholm, where we once more awakened to the joys of life, but then, alas! they had in them the dregs of bitterness. Two days after regaining our liberty, the news reached us that my poor mother had died at the roadside while chained to a gang of desperate convicts on their long and weary journey to Lake Baikal, the most dreaded district in all Asiatic Russia. The Almighty spared her the horrors of the fever-infected étapes and the gloom and torture of the mines, but from that moment my poor father, heart-broken, grew careless of the future, and it was only for my sake that he endeavoured to elude the bloodhounds of the Tzar.”
“Do you live here, in this house, alone?” I asked.
“No,” she replied. “I have Pétrouchka and his wife Akoulina, who were our servants in St Petersburg for many years, in addition to the English maid who admitted you.”
“Then you are not quite alone,” I said. “Besides, you ought not to be unhappy, for you have enough money to live comfortably, and you should try and forget your sad bereavement.”
“Alas! I cannot forget,” she said, still speaking in French. “It is impossible. I am exiled here in your country, while all my relatives and friends are so far away. I cannot go into your society, for I have no chaperon; besides, English puzzles me so. I shall never learn it, never. Oh, it is so difficult.”
“Yes,” I admitted, laughing. “But not so puzzling as your own Russian, with all its bewildering letters.”
She smiled, but there was a touch of wistful sadness in her handsome face when, after a slight pause, she looked at me earnestly, saying,—
“It was because I am so lonely and unhappy that I asked you to come here to-night.”
“To be your companion—eh?” I observed, laughing. “Well, what you have told me regarding Ella Laing is scarcely calculated to set a man’s mind at rest.”