Her astounding disclosures held me dumbfounded. I remembered vividly how, during our lunch at the Ship, Dudley had risen and gone out to the bar to speak to an acquaintance. It was at that moment, having stolen the document from me, he glanced at its register number and imitated it upon the dummy with which Ella had provided him.
“But how came you possessed of the original of the convention?” I asked.
“A week before I fled from you I received it by post anonymously,” she replied. “When compelled by my enemy to leave you and return here to my true position, I unfortunately left it behind, and knew that, sooner or later, you must discover it. The man who, with the Tzar’s authority, held me under the lash, still holds me, the plaything of his spite, and threatens that if I allow you to come here and occupy your rightful place as my husband, he will denounce me to the British Government as a spy. Hence I am still his puppet, still held by a bond of guilt that I dare not break asunder.”
“Be patient,” urged Sonia, in a deep, calm voice. “Be patient, and you shall yet be free.”
“Ah! Geoffrey,” sobbed my wife, her blanched, tearful face buried in her hands, “you can never, I fear, forgive. After all, notwithstanding the glamour that must surround me as Grand Duchess, I am but a mean, despicable woman who foully betrayed you, the man who loved me.”
“You atoned for your crime by your successful effort to preserve the peace of Europe,” I answered.
“Yes, yes,” she cried, with a quiver in her voice there was no mistaking for any note save that of love; “but, alas! I am in the power of an unscrupulous knave who parted us because he saw me happy with you. Can you ever forgive me? Can you, now you know of my unworthiness, ever say that you love me as truly as you did in those bygone days at ‘The Nook’? Speak! Tell me?”
“Yes,” I answered, fervently pressing her closely in affectionate embrace. “I forgive you everything, darling. You sinned; but, held as you have been by the hateful conditions imposed upon you by a base, unprincipled villain, I cannot blame, but only pity you.”
“Then you still love me, Geoffrey?” she cried, panting, gazing up into my face.
For answer I bent until my lips met hers in a long fond caress. In those moments of ecstasy I was conscious of having regained the idyllic happiness long lost. Even though her story was full of bitter and terrible sorrow, and rendered gloomy by the tragic death of her self-sacrificing friend, the truth nevertheless brought back to me the joys and pleasures of life that not long ago I believed had departed from me for ever.