GEORGE GRIFFITH (continued 2)

Their friendship had begun by a chance acquaintance some six years before at Aix-les-Bains. Both of them aristocrats to their finger-tips, it was not long before they struck a note of common sympathy. The once splendid name which the prince bore appealed instantly to the Englishman, who could trace his descent back to the days of the first Plantagenet, and it was not long before they found a closer bond than that of ancient ancestry.

One night, when the beach at Trouville was lit up by just such a moon as was now floating high over the pines on the hills round Elsenau, he had told the prince the story of his life—the story of an elder scion of an ancient line devoted rather to literature and the byways of science than to the political and social duties of his position, and, moreover, a man who had never found a woman whom his heart could call to his side to share it with him. He had devoted his after-college days to study and travel. His younger brother, a splendid specimen of English chivalry, had found his mate in the daughter of his father's oldest friend. He was a soldier, and when the Franco-German war broke out, nothing, not even the longing, half-reproachful looks of his betrothed, could keep him from volunteering in the French service. He had fought through the war with brilliant distinction, a private at Saarbruck and a captain during the Siege of Paris. Then, captured, badly wounded, by the Germans after a brilliant sortie, he was cured and released, only to be murdered by the communards on the eve of his return to England. A year or two after, the Earl abjured his vows of celibacy under the fascinations of a brilliant American beauty, and so had accepted the responsibility of perpetuating his race.

So these two men had met on common ground, and nothing was more natural than that they should have become such friends as they were. To a very great extent they stood apart from the traditions of their times. They were aristocrats in an age of almost universal democracy. Both of them firmly believed that democracy spelt degeneration, national and individual. Both of them were, in fact, incarnations of an age that was past, and which might or might not be renewed.

This was, indeed, the subject of their conversation as they strolled up and down the smoothly-shaven lawn under the sheltering pines, chatting easily and comparing in well-selected phrases the things of their own youth with those of the present swiftly moving and even a trifle blatant generations of to-day.

"I quite agree with you, my dear Lord Orrel," said the prince, as they turned at the end of their walk. "Democracy is tending now, just as it did in the days of Greece and Carthage and Rome, and to-day in my own unhappy France, to degeneration, and the worst of it is that there is no visible possibility of salvation. Our rulers have armed the mob with a weapon more potent than the thunders of Jove. The loafer of the café and the pot-house has a vote, and, therefore, the same voice in choosing the rulers of nations as the student and the man of science, or the traveller who is familiar with many lands and many races. I often think that it is a pity that some means cannot be found for placing—well, I will call it a despotic power—in the hands of a few men—men, for instance, if I may say so without flattery or vanity, like ourselves—men of wide experience and broad sympathies, and yet possessing what you and I know to be the essentials of despotism—that something that can only be inherited, not acquired."

"My dear prince, I agree with you entirely," replied Lord Orrel. "Our present civilisation is suffering from a sort of dry-rot. Sentiment has degenerated into sentimentalism, courage into a reckless gambling for honours, statesmanship into politics, oratory into verbosity. In short, the nineteenth century has degenerated into the twentieth. Everything seems going wrong. The world is ruled by the big man who shots his quotations on the Stock Exchange and the little one who serves behind his counter. It is all buying and selling. Honour and faith, and the old social creed which we used to call noblesse oblige, are getting quite out of date."

"Not that yet, my friend, surely," the prince interrupted, quickly gripping his companion's arm; "not that, at least, for us. I confess that we and those like us are, as one might say, derelicts on the ocean of society—we, who one day were stately admirals, to use the old phrase. And yet, as you said just now, if only some power could be placed in the hands of a few like ourselves, a power which would over-ride the blind, irresponsible, shifting will of the mutable mob which changes its vote and its opinions with the seasons, the world might be brought again into order, and the proletariat might be saved from its own suicide.

"And," he went on, turning at the other end of their promenade, "perhaps you will not believe me, but only a few weeks ago there was such a power in the hands of a Frenchman—of an Alsatian, perhaps I should say, but a man who had preserved his loyalty to France—a scientist of European reputation—a man who had discovered that this earth had a spirit, a living soul, and who could gain control of it—so complete a control, that he could draw it out and leave the earth dead—a man who—But there, I am wearying you; I am sure you must think that I am telling you some fairy tale."

"By no means, my dear prince," said Lord Orrel, doing his best to keep his voice steady, and not quite succeeding. "In the first place, I am quite sure that you would not speak so seriously on a subject that was not serious; and, in the second place, I can assure you that I am most deeply interested."

"A thousand pardons, my lord," said the prince. "Of course you would not think that of me. We have both of us lived too long to indulge in romance, and yet, if I could tell you the whole story, you would say that you have never heard such a romance as this."

"And, if it is not trespassing too far upon your confidence, my dear prince, I should be only too happy to hear you tell the whole story," said his lordship, with an unmistakable note of curiosity in his tone.

"I can tell you part of the story," replied the prince; "but not here. It is so strange, and it might have meant so much, not only to France, but to the world, that I can only tell it to you where no other ears than ours can hear it, and even then only under your solemn pledge of secrecy."

"As for the first condition, my dear prince," replied Lord Orrel, "I will ask you to take a glass of wine with me in my sitting-room. As for the second, you have my word."

"And, therefore, both conditions are amply satisfied. Let us go, and I will tell you the strangest story you have ever heard."

CHAPTER VIII

By the time the prince had ceased speaking there was not the slightest doubt in Lord Orrel's mind that, in some most mysterious manner, he was connected with the discovery which Hardress had made when he took the mutilated body out of the waters of the Channel. Perhaps even the unknown dead might have been someone near and dear to him. It seemed to him utterly impossible either to doubt the prince's word or to believe that two such discoveries could have been made by two men at the same time, or even that there could exist at the same time on earth two men whose genius, once put into practice, could make them rival masters of the world.

And supposing that he knew part of the story which the prince was going to tell him—the sequel, and, from a practical point of view, the all-important portion—ought he to tell him what he knew too? He was under no actual pledge of secrecy to his associates in the great Trust, but still he felt that he was under an honourable obligation to keep the story of the discovery to himself. On the other hand, granted that the prince knew the first half, would it be right—would it be honourable, according to his own exact code of honour, to keep the sequel from him? Perhaps the prince even had a definite personal interest in the scheme; and, in that case, to keep silence would be to rob him of his prior rights. What was he to do?

He had been a Minister of the Crown for a short term of office, and by the time they reached his sitting-room, and he had locked the door, after the wine had been placed on the table, diplomacy had come to his aid, and he had made up his mind. When he had filled the glasses he took out his cigar-case, selected the best it contained, and said:

"Prince, I'm going to ask you to allow me to take a very great liberty."

"My dear Lord Orrel, there is nothing that you could do that I should consider a liberty. Thank you, I will; I know that your cigars are always most excellent, and now we will make ourselves comfortable, and you shall take your liberty."

He took the proffered cigar as he spoke, snipped the end, and lit it. Lord Orrel did the same, and when they had saluted each other over their wine, in the old-fashioned, courtly style, he began:

"My dear prince, the liberty that I am going to ask your permission to take is a very great one, because it is a liberty of anticipation; and few men, even the most chivalrous, care to be anticipated, especially when they have an interesting story to tell. In other words, I, too, have a very strange story to tell you. In fact, the strangest that ever came within my experience. And there are reasons, which I will explain to you afterwards, why I am asking the favour of your permission to tell it before yours."

The prince looked puzzled, and his dark brows approached each other for just the fraction of a second. He took a sip at his wine, leant back in his chair, and blew a long whiff of smoke up towards the gaudily-painted ceiling. Then he said, with a barely perceptible shrug of his shoulders:

"My dear Lord Orrel, you are not asking me any favour. On the contrary, you are merely requesting that you shall entertain me before I try to do the same by you. Moreover, as it is quite impossible that there can be any connection between our stories, there can be no question of anticipation; so, pray, proceed. I am all attention."

"As I said," began Lord Orrel, settling himself in his chair, and taking a long pull at his cigar, "the story is a very strange one, and it is also one which could not well be told from the housetops, because it involves—well, what may be something almost as wonderful as what you hinted at in the garden just now."

"Ah," interrupted the prince, with a visible start and a sudden lifting of the eyebrows, "then, in truth, it must be strange indeed; and so I am more than ever anxious to hear it; and if, as I divine, you wish me to treat it in confidence, you, of course, have my word, as a gentleman of France, that no detail of it shall ever pass my lips."

His host felt not a little relieved at being released from the necessity of binding him to secrecy, as, for the sake of his colleagues, he would have felt obliged to do; so he said:

"That, my dear prince, it would be quite impossible to imagine; and now, as it is getting a little late, I will get to my story."

He began with the finding of the mutilated body by the Nadine, and the discovery of the tin box containing the momentous papers, and had just given a sketch of their contents and the use that was about to be made of the dead man's discovery when the prince, whose face had been growing greyer and greyer during the recital, at length lost his hold upon the stern control under which he had just placed himself. He sprang to his feet, flung his arms apart, and cried, in a high-pitched, half-choked voice:

"Mon Dieu! mon Dieu! It is the same!—what miracle has happened? My lord, you have been telling me the end of the story of which I was going to tell you the beginning. And so France, poor France, through the stupidity of the ministerial puppets that the mob has placed in the seats of their ancient rulers, has refused the sceptre of the world; and I—I, the heir of her ancient royal house, have lost not only the throne of my ancestors, but the power to make her the mistress of the nations. Truly, the mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small. Her kings misruled her, and she took other rulers, who have cheated and swindled her, and humbled her before those who once did her bidding; and now, when the hand of Fate holds out the means of regaining all that she has lost, and more, infinitely more, she puts it aside with the sneering laugh of contemptuous ignorance. Truly it is a judgment that judges even unto the third and fourth generation. Ah, yes; and on me, too!—I, who am innocent! Mon Dieu, mon Dieu, it is cruel!"

As the last words came from his trembling lips his hands came together on his forehead, and he dropped back into his chair.

For a moment of speechless astonishment Lord Orrel stared across the room at him. Then, dropping his cigar on the tray, he got up and went and laid his hand on the prince's shoulder.

"My dear prince, my dear friend," he said, in a voice moved by emotion, "I am most deeply distressed that my story should have affected you so painfully. Believe me, I had no intention, no thought even——"

The prince dropped his hands from his head, and stood and faced him, his face white and set and his eyes burning; but with a perfectly steady voice, he said:

"My lord, I thank you. So much emotion, though perhaps it was natural, ought not to have been shown. I should not have permitted it to myself, save in solitude. It was impossible that I should know that your lordship's story was the same as mine, and so, naturally, the shock was greater. And now, may I ask your lordship one question?"

"I will answer it, prince, before you ask it," interrupted Lord Orrel. "But first, let me beg of you to drink your wine; really, you do not look well."

The prince took the glass from him and drained it in silence, his hand shaking ever so little as he held it to his lips, and the other went on:

"Knowing what I did, I felt certain that two such miracles could not have happened at the same time; moreover, some inspiration told me that the discovery you spoke of in the garden was the same that my son made under such terrible circumstances in the Channel. Now, sit down, pray, do, and let us talk this matter over as men of the world."

"Men of the world!" echoed the prince, sadly, as he sat down again; "nay, of two worlds. I of the old, you and your son and your great business syndicate of the new; I of the past, you of the present and the future; I who would have revived the glories of an ancient race, the despotism, if you will, of a bygone dynasty, you who would found a new one—despotism a thousand times harder, a dynasty of money, not of blood, the most soulless and brutal of all dynasties. Ah, well, it is fate, and who shall question that? No; if you will pardon me, my dear Orrel, we will not talk further upon this subject, to-night, at any rate. I confess that what you have told me has affected me deeply. If you will permit me, I will go to bed. The Russians, you know, have a saying, 'Take thy thoughts to bed with thee, for the morning is wiser than the evening.' To-morrow, perhaps, I shall be able to converse with you on this momentous matter more calmly than I could do to-night."

"By all means, my dear prince," was the reply; "and, no doubt, such a course would be better for me too, for I admit that this extraordinary coincidence has upset me not a little as well. And so, good-night, and sound sleep."

"Ah, yes," replied the prince, as they shook hands at the door; "sound sleep. I hope so. Good-night, my lord, and pleasant dreams of the world-empire."

He turned away to his bedroom, which was the next but two to his daughter's. The intervening rooms were occupied by his valet and her maid. The valet's door was ajar, and there was a light in the room. He stopped, and said:

"I shall not want anything to-night, Felix, so you may go to bed. If I require you in the night I will knock on the wall, as usual."

"Bien, monseigneur," replied the valet, opening the door and bowing. "J'ai l'honneur de vous sous haiter le bon soir, monseigneur."

"Bon soir," replied the prince, as he passed on to his room. "Le chocolat a huit heures."

But Xavier de Condé, Prince of Bourbon, would never drink another cup of chocolate. As soon as his door closed behind him, a sternly-repressed flood of passion broke out, and he spent half the remainder of the night walking, in his stockinged feet, up and down his big bedchamber, with clenched teeth and tight-gripped hands, his brain seething with a thousand thoughts of passion, and his white, twitching lips shaping unspoken words of rage, bitterness, and despair. It was a cruel irony that Fate had wrought on him and his ancient house. The possible sceptre of the world had been offered to his hereditary enemies, the Republicans of France, and, if Fargeau had held to his compact, the compact for which he had given his daughter to his son, he would have been master of France; and Fargeau would have kept it, for he was a loyal Frenchman; and his son would have married a future Queen of France! And now not only had France refused the sceptre and snatched the crown from him, but the sceptre had passed by some bitter caprice of Fate into the hands of France's hereditary enemies. What could he say or do? Nothing. It was maddening—worse than maddening. He had pledged his honour, and could tell no one—but even if he could, what then? The secret was out—worse—it was in the hands of men who could make the ideal a reality. They could not even give him back the power if they would, for the knowledge was theirs already, and they could act on it while he could not.

The more he thought the faster the fever that was burning in his blood increased. His lips and tongue grew parched. His steps grew irregular and faltering. The veins in his head were beating on his brain like sledge-hammers. The lights began to waver before his eyes. He felt instinctively that madness—that long-inherited curse of his race—was coming. What if he should really go mad and babble not only of this great secret, but also of all the plots and intrigues of which he had been the centre! How many devoted friends and adherents would be consigned to prison and exile—perhaps even to the scaffold! The very thought chilled him back into sanity for the time being. He rapped sharply at the wall, and presently Felix appeared, half-dressed, and doing his best to stifle a yawn.

"Felix," said the prince, who was now sitting in his arm-chair with his head between his hands, "bid Marie arouse mam'selle immediately, and request her to dress and come to me. I am unwell—another of my attacks, I fear—and she only knows what to do for me. Quick—I need her at once."

Felix vanished, and within ten minutes the marquise was in her father's room; but by this time the blood was beating on his brain again, and the fierce light of insanity was beginning to dawn in his eyes.

With the valet's help she partly undressed him and got him to bed. Then she locked the door and braced herself for what she instinctively knew must be a terrible ordeal.

She saw at a glance that some terrible shock had thrown his brain off its balance. She had plotted with him and for him, and she knew why it was her duty to lock the door. But what was this? Whence had come this blow which had struck him down so swiftly? She soon learnt, as the disjointed words and fragmentary sentences were shaped in the struggle between sanity and delirium for the command of his brain. Hour after hour it went on, a piteous jumble of the memories of a long, busy life; but in the end, out of the mental tangle she was able to unravel one clear thread of thought. Emil Fargeau had given his secret to the sea, and the sea had given it into the hands of the English, the ancient enemies of her country and her race; and it was the son of this Lord Orrel, the brother of the haughty English beauty sleeping here, under the same roof, who had re-discovered it, and they were even worse than English, they were half-American; and England and America would between them share that empire of the world, that mastery of the human race, which should have been her father's and hers. She had even permitted her troth to be sold to a simple officer in the German army, a spy in the enemy's camp, in order to purchase this new sovereignty for her house.

The prince was rapidly sinking; she could see that, and yet she was helpless to save him, for she had promised that no one, not even a doctor, should be admitted into the room. She gave him a dose of an opiate which he always carried with him, and about dawn he was sleeping, but every now and then talking in his sleep more coherently. At sunrise the effect of the drug wore off, and delirium resumed its sway for a few moments. His eyes opened, and with a sudden jerk he sat up in bed, his eyes glaring at the opposite wall, and his fingers clutching and tearing at the bedclothes. His lips worked convulsively for a while, then, with a hoarse, croaking scream he died.

"France! O ma belle France, maitresse du monde—et moi ton roi, ton—ah——!"

His voice dropped suddenly in a low, soft sigh, his eyelids fell, and his arms shrank to his sides, and he rolled back into his daughter's arms. The fresh rush of blood to his head had broken a vessel on the brain.

Adelaide knew instinctively that the dead weight in her arms was not that of a living man. She laid him back on the pillows, called up Felix and sent him for the resident physician. When he had made his examination, he said, in his guttural French:

"Mam'selle la Marquise, there is no hope. The prince is dead. If I had been called earlier I might have done something. I will make an examination afterwards and certify the cause of death, according to law. Accept my most respectful condolences."

That evening Shafto Hardress arrived from Paris at the Hôtel Wilhelmshof.

CHAPTER IX

In the midst of the desolation which had so swiftly and unexpectedly fallen upon her, the help and solace even of those whom she now knew to be her enemies—enemies perhaps to the death—were very welcome to Adelaide de Montpensier. Every sort of trouble that could be taken off her hands they relieved her of. Hardress travelled to Vienna, which the prince had made his headquarters, to interview his man of business and to escort back the prince's sister, Madame de Condé, Princess of Bourbon, who was now, save Adelaide, the only representative of the older branch of the ancient line. The younger had bowed the knee to the Republican Baal in France, and they were not even notified of the prince's death.

Lord Orrel undertook the arrangement of the funeral and all the legal formalities connected with it, and Lady Olive was so sweet and tender in her help and sympathy that, in the midst of her grief, Adelaide began to love her in spite of herself.

The funeral was without any display that might have signalised the rank of the dead man, and Louis Xavier de Condé, Prince of Bourbon, was laid to rest in an ordinary brick grave on the hillside under the pines of Elsenau. Both Adelaide and her aunt would have applied to the French authorities to permit his interment in the resting-place of his ancestors, but the old prince had given special instructions that while the Republican banner waved over France not even his dead body should rest in her soil, and so his wishes were, perforce, respected.

The night after the funeral the marquise was sitting at her writing-table before the window of her private sitting-room. The window looked put over a vast expanse of undulating forest land, broken here and there by broad grassy valleys through which ran little tributaries of the Weser, shining like tiny threads of silver under the full moon riding high in the heavens.

She had drawn the blind up, and for nearly half-an-hour she had been gazing dreamily out over the sombre, almost ghostly landscape. The deep gloom of the far-spreading pine forest harmonised exactly with her own mood, and yet the twinkle of the streams amidst the glades, and the glitter of the stars on the far-off horizon, were to her as symbols of a light shining over and beyond the present darkness of her soul.

The night had fallen swiftly and darkly upon her. First the vanishing into impenetrable mystery of the man upon whom rested her hopes and dreams of one day queening it over France as her ancestress Marie Antoinette had done, and not only over France as a kingdom, but as mistress of the world. And now the veil of mystery had been rudely torn aside, and showed her these English and Americans, the hated hereditary enemies of her house and country, in possession of the power which should have been hers. Then, last and worst of all, her father and her friend, the only real friend she had ever had, the only human being she had ever really loved—for she barely remembered the mother who had died when she was scarcely out of her cradle—had been stricken down by the same blow that had fallen upon her, and lay yonder on the hillside under the pines, all his high hopes and splendid ambitions brought to nothing by the swift agony of a single night.

There was an open book on the table before her—a square volume, daintily bound in padded Russia-leather, and closed with a silver spring lock. A gold-mounted stylographic pen lay beside it, and she held between her fingers a little cunningly contrived silver key which she had just detached from her watch-chain.

"Shall I write it," she murmured, in a soft, low tone, "or shall I keep it hidden where no human eyes can read it? But who can ever read this?" she went on after a little pause, letting her hand fall on the square volume. "After all, are not all my secrets here? and is not this the only friend and confidant that I have now left to me? Yes, I am a woman, when all is said; and I must open my heart to someone, if only to myself."

She turned the little shaded lamp by her side so that the light fell on the volume, and she put the key in the lock and opened it. About half the pages were filled with writing—not in words, but in a kind of shorthand which could only be read by her father, herself, and three of the most trusted adherents of their lost cause. Her eyes ran rapidly over the last few pages. They contained the last chapters in the book of her life which was now closed. Before she reached the end a mist of tears was gathering in her long, dark lashes. She wiped it away with a little lace-edged handkerchief, and took up her pen. She scored two heavy lines across the bottom of the last written page, turned over a fresh one, and began to write.

"My father is dead, and with him the dreams which for years we have dreamt together. Was there ever a more cruel irony of Fate than this? Was Fate itself ever more unkind to man or woman? Only a few weeks ago, and I had sold myself, with his consent, so far did our devotion go to serve the sacred cause of our house, to this big, handsome Alsatian—a servant of the German Emperor, the arch-enemy of our country, the owner of the two provinces which my ancestor Louis tore from Germany. I did it because in high politics it is necessary sometimes to sacrifice oneself, partly too because no other man had appealed to me as he did. I knew that he was running tremendous risks; I believed—yes, and I still believe, that he was risking everything—rank, honour, liberty, even life itself, by wearing the uniform of his country's enemy so that he might learn his enemy's secrets.

"He loves me—yes, if ever man loved woman, he loves me—me, Adelaide de Condé, Marquise de Montpensier; and I—ah, mon Dieu, is it possible that the daughter of Marie Antoinette has sunk so low?—I allowed him to believe that I loved him too. He believes it now. I suppose he would still believe it, even if he knew what I know now—that his father is dead, that the secret of the world-empire which he could have given us, that power for which I promised myself to him, so that I might share it with him, has gone, that it is worse than lost, since the Fates have given it into the hands of the enemies of our house.

"And so it is gone—worse than gone—and so, my friend Victor, I am afraid you will have to find out in the course of circumstances that a woman's smiles do not always mean a reflection of the light in her lover's eyes, and that her kisses do not always mean love. It is a pity, because, after all, I believe you are a true Frenchman, even if you wear a German uniform; and if that dream had become a reality, and you and I had shared the throne of France, perhaps I should have loved you as well and as truly as most queens have loved their consorts.

"But, alas, my poor Victor, the sceptre has passed away—for the time being, at least—from the House of Bourbon. It is given into the hands of our enemies, and so you, by force of fate, must stand aside. I shall not tell you this yet, because afterwards, perhaps, you may be useful. I wonder what you would think of me—even you, a man who in the old days would only have been a sort of slave, living or dying socially as the great Louis smiled or frowned upon you—I wonder what you would think if you could look over my shoulder and read this writing and see a woman's soul laid naked on this page. Perhaps you might think me utterly mean and contemptible—you would if you didn't understand; but if you did, if you could see all and understand all—well, then, you might hate me, but I think you would be man enough to respect me.

"At least you are diplomatist enough to know, after all, in the great game of politics, a game that is played for the mastery of kingdoms and peoples, to say nothing of the empire of the world, women have to count themselves as pawns. Even the cleverest, the most brilliant, the most beautiful of us—that is all we are. Sometimes our beauty or the charm of our subtle wit may win the outer senses of the rulers of the world; they may admire us physically or mentally, or both, but even at the best, it is only the man that we enslave. The man goes to sleep for a night, he dreams perhaps of our beauty and the delight of our society, but in the morning it is the statesman that wakes, and he looks back on the little weakness of the night before, and thinks of us as an ordinary man might think of the one extra liqueur which he ought not to have taken after a good dinner.

"And now these English—these people into whose hands Fate has given my heritage! Ah, cruel Fate; why did you not make them hateful, vulgar, common—something that I could hate and tread under foot—something that I could think as far beneath me as the bourgeois canaille of Republican France? But you have made them aristocratic! Lord Orrel's lineage goes back past the days of St Louis. His ancestors fought side by side with mine in the first Crusade. True, they have mixed their blood with that American froth, the skimming of the pot-bouillé of the nations, but still, after all, the old blood tells.

"Lady Olive—how I wish that she were either vulgar or ugly, so that I could hate her!—is a daughter of the Plantagenets fit to mate with a Prince of Bourbon, if there were one worthy of her. Lord Orrel might have been one of those who went with the Eighth Henry to meet Francis on the Field of the Cloth of Gold, patrician in every turn of voice and manner and movement. And Shafto Hardress, who will be Earl of Orrel some day, and master of the world: yes, he is a patrician too; but with him there is something a little different—the American blood perhaps—keen, quick, alert, one moment indolently smoking his cigar and sipping his coffee, the next on his feet, ready to assume the destinies of nations. A man, too, strong and kindly—a man who would risk his life to save a drowning dog, and yet strike down an enemy in his path, so that he might rise a foot or so on the ladder of fame or power. But he is more than that, he wants far more than the empty fame of applause. The fame he wants is that which comes from acknowledged power. You can see the dreamer in his eyes and on his forehead, and you can see the doer on that beautiful, pitiless mouth of his and the square, strong jaw which is under it.

"What a man to love and to be loved by! What would he think, I wonder, if he could read what I am writing here! And yet, are not all things possible? Is it not the unexpected that comes to pass? Why not? Behold, I am left desolate, the garden that I called my heart is a wilderness—a wilderness ploughed up by the ploughshare of sorrow and bitterness, and so it lies fallow. Would it be possible for him to sow the seed for which it is waiting?—and then the harvest would be the empire of the world shared between us! Well, after all, I am not only Adelaide de Condé, daughter of a lost dynasty. I am a woman, with all the passions and ambitions of our race burning hot within me. If I cannot sit on the throne of the Bourbons, why should I not be empress-consort on the throne of a world-wide empire?—why not? It would be a magnificent destiny!"

When she had written this she laid her pen down, put her elbows on the table, and, with her chin between her hands, looked up in silence for some minutes at the moon sailing through rank after rank of fleecy clouds. Then she took up her pen again, and wrote:

"I wonder if there is another woman?"

She looked at the last words for a moment or two, then put down her pen, closed the book and locked it, and, as she put it away into a drawer of her writing-table, she murmured:

"Ah, well, if there is—if there is——" She caught a sight of herself in the long glass of one of the wardrobes, and she saw a tall, exquisitely-shaped figure of a beautiful woman clad in the plainest of mourning. She looked at herself with eyes of unsparing criticism, and found no fault, and she turned away from the glass, saying:

"Ah, well, if there is—we shall see—and, if there really is, I wonder what she's like."

CHAPTER X

Within a week after the funeral Adelaide and Madame de Condé returned to the late prince's hotel on the Ringstrasse in Vienna. They had taken most cordial leave of Lord Orrel and his son and daughter, and, in spite of all their prejudices of race and nation, Adelaide de Condé had brought something more away with her than the memory of a great sorrow tempered by the kindness of those whom a strange freak of fortune had made friends as well as enemies.

Even the two or three days that she had spent in his society had sufficed to show her that Shafto Hardress possessed in an infinitely greater degree those qualities which go to make the rulers of humanity than her big handsome Alsatian, whose utmost ambition was the command of an army corps. He had the hard, keen, unemotional common-sense which enabled him to see even the tremendous possibilities of Emil Fargeau's discovery in a purely practical and even commercial light, but at the same time he possessed sufficient imagination to enable him to see how far-reaching the moral and social effects of the working-out of the scheme would be on the peoples of the world.

She had herself said nothing of what had passed during that terrible night. For all they knew, the prince had taken the secret with him to the grave. Once Lord Orrel had very delicately led the conversation up as near to the edge of this supremely important subject as his instincts would let him go, but he had learnt nothing, and an hour or so later he said to his son:

"My dear Shafto, it is perfectly certain that my dear old friend the prince died without giving her any inkling of the great secret which he took to the grave with him."

"Either that, dad," he replied, "or she is the most perfect diplomatist in Europe. I think I have heard you say that the first essential of diplomacy is the ability to assume a perfect counterfeit of innocence and ignorance—in other words, to convey the impression that you know nothing when you know everything."

"Well, if that is so in this case," replied his father, "the mask which mam'selle wears is as impenetrable as it is beautiful. Really, Shafto, I think that rumour did not exaggerate when it called her the most beautiful woman in Europe."

"Yes," said Hardress, slowly; "she certainly is very lovely, and, from the little I've seen of her, she seems as gifted as she is beautiful."

"Then, my dear boy, if you really think that," said Lord Orrel, "how would it be if you were to repair this involuntary injustice which the Fates have wrought upon her? The most beautiful woman in Europe, and perhaps the most nobly born, and you one of the masters of the world! Why not? There is the realisation of a dream even greater than the prince's; and if I have any skill in reading a woman's face or woman's eyes, it is a dream not very difficult for you to realise."

Hardress laughed, and shook his head, and said:

"No, dad; I'm afraid that's not difficult. It's impossible."

The earl looked up sharply, and said:

"Oh, then, of course, there is someone else in the case; and that can hardly be anyone but——"

"You're quite right, dad; it's Chrysie Vandel. I meant to tell you before, but such a lot of things have happened since I got here, and I didn't really think it was of very much consequence for the present—because, after all, she's only accepted me conditionally—but, lovely and all as the marquise is, I think I would rather rule over the Orrel estates with Chrysie than over the world with her."

"Then that, of course, settles it," said the earl, with a certain note of displeasure in his voice. "Miss Vandel is a most charming and fascinating girl, but you will perhaps pardon me, Shafto, if I say that she no more compares with the daughter of the royal line of France than——"

"You needn't go on, dad," said Hardress, interrupting him with a laugh; "comparisons are always more or less unpleasant; and then, you see, you're not in love with either of them, and I'm pretty badly in love with one."

"Well, well," said his father, "of course, if that's the case, there's an end of it, and there's nothing more to be said. Still, for more reasons than one, I must say that I wish you had met the marquise first. The Plantagenets and the Bourbons would have made a splendid stock."

On the same day that this conversation took place in the gardens of the Hôtel Wilhelmshof in Elsenau, a very different one was taking place in the prince's hotel at Vienna between Adelaide de Condé and Victor Fargeau, who, on receipt of the news of the prince's death, had obtained a few days' leave, and travelled post-haste from Petersburg to Vienna.

It was after dinner, and Madame de Condé had retired to her own room with a slight attack of nerves. The marquise and Victor Fargeau were sitting on either side of the open fireplace, with a little table, holding coffee and liqueurs, between them. Adelaide had accepted a cigarette from his case, and he had lit one too. For several minutes after her aunt had left the room she puffed daintily at her cigarette, and looked across at him with intricately-mingled feelings. At length Victor broke the silence by saying, with a note of impatience in his tone:

"And now, Mam'selle la Marquise, or, if you like it better, my most beautiful Adelaide, I have possessed my soul in patience for nearly two hours. When are you going to tell me this wonderful news of yours?"

"Wonderful, my dear Victor? Alas, it is not only that; it is most sorrowful as well." Then, bracing herself with a visible effort, she threw her half-smoked cigarette into the fireplace, and, gripping the arms of the big chair in which she was sitting, she went on, staring straight into his eyes: "It is nothing less than the story of how your father met his end, and what became of his great secret."

"Nom de Dieu!" he cried, springing to his feet; "you know that, and from whom?"

"From these English and Americans—or Anglo-Americans, as I suppose I ought to call them," she replied; "the people to whom the Fates gave the secret with your father's dead and mutilated body; the people who buried him—the man who might have been the saviour of France—in a nameless English grave."

She kept her voice as steady as she could while she was saying this; she even tried to speak coldly and pitilessly, for she had made up her mind that the reasons of state for her betrothal to this man no longer existed. She had an even higher stake to play for now, and, in spite of all her pride of blood and racial prejudice, this would not be a sacrifice; on the contrary, it would be rather a victory—and so she hardened her voice, as she had done her heart.

"Dead! mutilated!" he exclaimed again. "Yes; I knew he was dead, for he told me in his letter from Paris that he would not, and could not, survive the failure of all his hopes. There were reasons why he should not, but they are of no consequence now. He staked everything, and lost everything, and that is enough. It is not for me to be his judge, now that he has gone to the presence of the highest Judge of all."

"That was said like a good son and a true man, Victor," replied the marquise, with a swift glance of something like admiration at his flushed and handsome face. "But there is something more serious than even the death of one whom you have loved and I have most deeply respected. I heard enough from my own father, during the night he died, to convince me that these people have not only got the secret, but that they are already devoting millions to convert your father's theory into a terrible reality.

"This Viscount Branston, Lord Orrel's son, has already been across to America, and has leased the land about the Magnetic Pole from the Canadian Government. A syndicate has been formed, and even at this very moment the preliminaries of the work are being pushed forward as rapidly as possible. Within a few months they will have begun the storage station itself, and then nothing can save the world from the irresistible power which will be theirs."

While she was speaking, Victor was striding up and down the dining-room, his hands clasped behind his back, and his frowning eyes bent on the thick carpet. Suddenly he stopped and faced her, and said, in sharp, almost passionate accents:

"Perhaps it is not too late after all. My father left me those papers in duplicate. I am weary—sick to death of playing this double game. In a few months war between France and Germany will be inevitable. Russia will side with us, and the prize of the victors will be—for France, the restoration of the Lost Provinces, and a good fat slice of China, and for Russia the whole of Northern China and Korea. Germany hasn't a friend on earth. The English hate her because she is beating them in trade rivalry; Austria has no more forgotten Sadowa than we have forgotten Sedan. Italy is crippled for lack of money, and so is Spain. The rest don't matter; and England and America will be only too glad to stand aside and see Europe tear itself to pieces. So France and Russia will win, and we shall crush our conqueror into the dust."

"But how can that be?" she interrupted, "if your father's calculations were correct—as these people have evidently found them to be—for if they had not done so they would not have risked their millions on them. From what you and he have told me of his discovery, once these works are set in operation round the Magnetic Pole, fighting will be impossible, save with the permission of those who own them. Metals, as he proved in his last experiment, will become brittle as glass, cannons and rifles will burst at the first shot, even swords and bayonets will be no more use than icicles; steam-engines will cease to work, and the world will go back to the age of wood and stone.

"Picture to yourself, my dear Victor, the armed millions of Europe facing each other, unable to fire a shot, or even to make a bayonet charge. Fancy the fleets of Russia and France and Germany laid up like so many worn-out hulks. No, no, my friend; there can be no talk of serious war while these people possess the power of preventing it at their will."

"But war there must and shall be!" he exclaimed. "I have not been a traitor to my country even in appearance, I have not worn this German uniform—this livery of slavery—for nothing. I have not wormed my way into the confidence of my superiors, I have not risked something worse than death to discover the details of Germany's next campaign against France, to have all my work brought to nothing at the eleventh hour by these English-Americans. No, there may be time even yet; I have risked much, and I will risk more; and you, Adelaide, will you help me? Will you keep the compact which your father made with mine?"

She had been growing paler all the time he had been speaking, knowing instinctively what was coming. She rose slowly from her chair, and said, almost falteringly:

"What do you mean, Victor? How can I help you, when these people already have the secret in their hands, and have been spending their millions for weeks? What can we do against them?"

"We can do this," he replied, stopping again in his walk; "my father pledged his honour as well as everything else he had in the world to insure the success of this scheme. I, his son, can do no less; I will pledge mine in the same cause. I am on leave, and I can wear plain clothes. To-morrow I will start for Paris and see if I cannot bring that pig-headed Minister of War to something like reason. I think I have a suggestion which he will find worth working out, and certainly he will be interested in other things that I shall put before him. Germany I have done with. I have worn the livery of shame too long. Henceforth I am what I was born—a Frenchman. I will resign my commission to-morrow, even if France lets me starve for it. I can easily do that, for the son of a disgraced man cannot remain in the German army, and my poor father disgraced himself to make France the mistress of the world. A miserable Jew in Strassburg holds the honour of our family in his hand. I have no money to redeem it, and so it must go."

She had almost said, "Victor, I am rich; let me redeem it," when she remembered that she was no longer more loyal to him than he was to Germany. All the while that he had been talking she had been thinking, almost against her will, of Shafto Hardress, and comparing him only too favourably with this man, who, however honourable his motives might seem to himself, was still a traitor and a spy. Instead of this, she said, rising and holding out her hand, "Well, Victor, so far as I can help you I will. We are going to Paris ourselves in a few days, and, by the way, that reminds me I had a letter from Sophie Valdemar only this morning, telling me that she and the count are going there too."

"Ah yes," replied Victor; "a mixture of diplomacy and pleasure, I've no doubt. I wonder what the fair Sophie would give to know what you and I know, Adelaide?"

"A good deal, no doubt," smiled Adelaide, as they shook hands. "Of one thing I'm quite certain; if Russia had the knowledge that you are going to give to France, Russia would find some means of making those storage works an impossibility."

"And that is exactly what I propose to persuade France to do, if possible; but we can talk that over better when we meet in Paris. And now, my Adelaide, good-night."

He clasped her hand and drew her towards him; for the fraction of a second she drew back, and then she yielded and submitted to his kiss; but when the door had closed behind him, she drew the palm of her hand across her lips with a gesture almost of disgust, and said:

"No, my Victor; that must be the last. You cannot afford a Princess of Bourbon now. I sold myself for statecraft which is craft no longer; and, besides, there is another now. Ah, well, I wonder what will happen in Paris? And Sophie Valdemar, too, and the count! Altogether, I think we shall make quite an interesting little party when we meet in la Ville Lumière."

CHAPTER XI

Ten days had passed since Victor Fargeau's conversation with Adelaide de Condé in Vienna. He had adhered to the decision that he had come to so suddenly under the spell of her wonderful eyes.

He had no family ties now. His mother had died several years before. His two sisters had married Frenchmen, and migrated with their husbands into Normandy. The estate in Alsace, which should have been his own patrimony, was lost, and the German Jew, Weinthal, held not only that but the honour of his family, the good name of his dead father, in his hands. So he had decided to cut himself adrift from his native land until it had become once more a part of France.

He had written to Petersburg and resigned his position on the Diplomatic Staff, and he had also written to headquarters resigning his commission, and telling enough of his father's story to show that, since it was impossible for him now, as a man with a tarnished name, to hold his head up amongst his brother officers, there was nothing left for him but retirement into civil life.

A reply had come back, to the effect that the circumstances of his very painful case were under consideration, and that he need not report himself for duty until the general of the division to which he was attached had given his decision.

He knew that this was equivalent to an acceptance of his resignation. Even though he had asked for it, his dismissal galled him. He knew perfectly well that he had only entered the German army for the purposes of revenge, that in honest language he could only be described as a traitor and a spy—a man who had deliberately abused his position and the confidence of his superiors to get possession of plans of fortresses, details of manœuvres, lines of communication, available rolling-stock, and points of entry which had been selected for possible invasion.

He had, in fact, done more than even Dreyfus was ever accused of, and now, since everything else was lost, he was determined to take the last step. He would throw off his enforced allegiance to Germany; he would take the wreck of his fortunes with him to France, and he would offer her his services and his information. He knew well enough that they would not be rejected, as his father's priceless discovery had been. What he possessed would be bought eagerly by any of the chancelleries of Europe. The French Ministry of War would not refuse his services as it had refused his father's.

Even now some means might be found to checkmate these English-Americans. Already a scheme, daring and yet practicable, was shaping itself in his mind, and if that succeeded he might still achieve the one desire of his life and call Adelaide de Condé his own. For the present, although she had said nothing at that last interview, he felt that a change had come into their relationship. Her words had been more formal and more measured, and her last kiss colder than before. He felt that he was on his trial; that if he did not achieve something great she was lost to him.

And then there was the other—this English-American—who had not only got the Great Secret, but the millions to put it into practice. He knew her high ambitions. He knew that if she had to choose between love for a man, and the fulfilment of a great project, the man would have but little chance. But he had loved her since he knew the meaning of the word, and he had resolved to risk everything that was left to him to win back what had once been within his grasp. If in the end he failed and the other man won—well, so much the worse for the other man.

And then there was Sophie Valdemar. Even if this English-American did take Adelaide from him——But that was another matter, the fragment of a possible destiny which still lay upon the knees of the gods. If the worst came to the worst, what would Russia not give to know all that he knew and all that was contained in the only legacy that his father had left him.

So thinking, he travelled to Paris, leaving his uniform behind him, and dressed just as an ordinary man about town, quietly, but with exquisite care and neatness.

As soon as he had settled himself in a modest hotel in one of the streets of the Avenue de l'Opé, he wrote a discreetly-worded note to one of the secretaries of the Ministry of War, a former schoolfellow of his, with whom he had had previous communications of a confidential sort, asking him to arrange a private interview for him with the Minister at the earliest possible date, and, if possible, to dine with him the next evening. The next morning he called to pay his respects to Madame de Bourbon and the marquise at the hotel they had taken in the Avenue Neuilly.

He met the marquise alone in the salon. She received him quietly and almost coldly—but this he had expected.

"So you have finally decided," she said. "I thought from your letter that you would do so. How very different you look en civile! Really, although we naturally hate the sight of them, still, it must be admitted that those German uniforms do make a good-looking man look his best."

"Yes," replied Victor, choking down his chagrin as best he might; "to a certain extent it is true, after all, that the feathers make the bird, and so, of course, the clothes make the man. Still, I'm afraid I shall have to ask you to tolerate me for the future without my German plumage. As you say, I have made my decision. I have broken with Germany for ever. Henceforth, I am a son of France—and, Adelaide, I have come to ask a daughter of France to help me to serve her."

"Of France!" she echoed, drawing herself up, and looking at him with a half-angry glint in her eyes, "of what France? Of this nation of snobs and shopkeepers, ruled by a combination of stockbrokers, heavy-witted bourgeoisie and political adventurers? or the old France—my France—the France of my ancestors, as it was in the days when the great Louis said: 'L'état c'est moi'? The one is not worth saving; the other might be worth restoring."

"But this France of the bourgeoisie must first be saved, so that we may make out of it the foundation for the throne of the great Louis. If we succeed, Adelaide, as it is still possible that we may do, we shall be strong enough to abolish the salic law and to enthrone you as Empress of the French."

"Of France, if you please! My ancestors were Kings of France. Even the Corsican dared only style himself Emperor of the French. You seem to forget that I am a daughter of the Bourbons, a scion of the older line, and that therefore France is my personal heritage. But come," she went on, with a swift change of tone and manner, "it will be time enough to talk about that when I am nearer to my inheritance than I am now. You said that you wanted my help—how? What can I do now, left alone as I am?"

"Not quite alone, Adelaide," he said, half reproachfully. "Have I not given up everything, even, as some would say, sacrificed honour itself, to help you to win back that which is your own by every right? And you can help me as no one else can. I have a friend in the Ministry of War—Gaston Leraulx, one of the secretaries. We were school-fellows and college friends. He is to dine with me to-night, and he will arrange an interview with the Minister of War. I shall ask you to come with me to that interview."

"What do you say, Victor? You wish me, a princess of the House of Bourbons to enter the bureau of one of these ministers—these politicians who are ruling in the place of the old noblesse—men whom we might perhaps have employed as lacqueys?"

"That is true," he replied; "but remember, Adelaide, that time brings its differences. My ancestors were nobles when yours were kings. If the old order of things is to be restored we must use these people as means to an end. I ask you to come with me to the Minister of War, so that you may help me to convince him, from your own knowledge, of the terrible mistake that he made when he refused to entertain the project that my father placed before him.

"You can tell him that strange story of how my father in his despair committed his body and his secret to the sea; how the sea gave it up into the hands of our worst enemies—the enemies of yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow—England and America; and how, even now, they are spending their millions upon that upon which France would not even risk a few paltry thousands.

"When I place my papers before him he will see that they are identical with my father's, and I shall give him others which will make it impossible for him to doubt my faith; and you, you will be there to help me with your knowledge, with the prestige of your name, and with your beauty. The General may be all that you think him, but do not forget that he is a Frenchman, and that all Frenchmen who are not quite mad respect and admire at least two things——"

"And those are—what?" she said, taking a couple of steps towards him, and speaking in a low, earnest tone. "Am I to understand you to mean that this man—I know that he is one of the most able men that France can boast of—might perhaps be made an instrument of?"

"I mean," said Victor, taking her hand unresistingly, "that General Ducros is himself an aristocrat, a man whose forefathers served yours well; that he is a Frenchman whose spirit will recognise yours as being of similar lineage, whose eyes will not be blind, and whose ears will not be deaf. Surely, Adelaide, you see by this time what I mean: you see how, with you, I may succeed in everything, and, without you, I may fail. And, remember, if I fail there is an end of everything. This is our last hope. If it is not realised, these accursed English and Americans will be masters of the situation, masters of the world, indeed. Surely, Adelaide, for the sake of all that is past and all that may be to come you will not say no?"

"No, Victor; I will not," she replied, still allowing her hand to rest in his, and yet thinking the while of that other man, whose face was ever present to her eyes, and whose voice was ever echoing in her ears. "I will visit this Minister of yours with you. His name is good, and perhaps he may not be unworthy of it. At any rate, he is not disgraced by one of those new titles of the First or Second Empire. If I can help you I will; trust me for that. When it is arranged send me a telegram and our carriage is at your disposal. Ah, who is this?"

At this moment the door opened, and the lacquey announced:

"Monsieur le Comte de Valdemar; Ma'm'selle la Comtesse de Valdemar."

Victor Fargeau saw at a glance that the count and Sophie were dressed in half-mourning, and instantly divined that their visit was one of condolence. This, of course, gave him a most excellent excuse to make his adieux.

There was just a glimmer of taunting mockery in Sophie's brilliant eyes as she recognised the dashing young cavalry officer in the sober garb of civil life, but it passed like a flash, and as they shook hands she said:

"A most unexpected meeting, captain!" And then, with a look of frank challenge, "No doubt it is most important business that has brought you to Paris en civile."

"It is not without importance, countess, at least to my own poor and presently insignificant self. Whether," he went on, with a swift involuntary glance at Adelaide, who was receiving the condolences of the count, "it will ever be of importance to others is one of the secrets of fate; and, if so, you, who are no doubt justly credited with knowing half the secrets of Europe, will probably be one of the first to discover the fact."

"I wonder whether that is intended for a compliment or the reverse," said Sophie, with a look of challenge coming back into her eyes. "You see, captain, there are two sorts of people who are supposed to know everything—diplomatists and spies."

Her voice dropped almost to a whisper as she spoke the last word.

Victor did his best to preserve his composure, but Sophie's watchful eyes saw that the shot had gone home; still, the next moment he replied, with the stiff wooden-doll bow of the German officer, and without a tremor in his voice:

"It would be quite impossible that mam'selle could be anything but one of the two."

As he raised his head she looked into his eyes again, and laughed outright.

"Well hit, captain! that was very nicely put. I think you and I would make better friends than enemies, and in proof of my belief, let me tell you a secret which is not of Europe. An Anglo-American syndicate has for some reason or other leased several square miles round the Magnetic Pole in Boothia Land, British North America."

"Really! And might I ask why? It doesn't seem to be a very profitable investment in landed property."

"Who knows?" said Sophie, with a little shrug of her shapely shoulders. "These English and Americans, you know, are always doing the maddest things. I shouldn't wonder if they intended to turn the Aurora borealis into electric light for Chicago."

"Nor I," said Victor. "And now, if you will permit me, I must say Au revoir."

"I wonder how much our ex-captain really knows, and if my dear friend Adelaide here knows anything or not," said Sophie, in her soul, when Victor had made his adieux and the door closed behind him.

CHAPTER XII

It was not until four days later that Victor's friend in the Ministry of War was able to procure an appointment for him with General Ducros. Pressure of business was Captain Gaston Leraulx' explanation, and it was an honest one. What he did not know was that on the evening of the day when Count Valdemar and his daughter paid their visit of condolence to Adelaide de Condé, General Ducros dined with them.

They had no other guest, for the best of reasons. Countess Sophie, the omniscient, by means of a happy accident, had got a fairly clear idea of the outlines of the Great Storage Scheme. The servants of the White Tzar are everywhere, known or unknown, generally the latter. A Russian trapper happened to meet a French-Canadian voyageur in Montreal when Shafto Hardress was making his negotiations with the Canadian Government. They had a few drinks and a talk over the extraordinary deal that he had made with the Canadian Government, a deal which had been reported and commented on by the Canadian and American journals with the usual luxuriance of speculative imagination. The same night the voyageur and the trapper, both men who were living on the products of their season's hunting and trapping, cabled practically the same details to Paris and Petersburg.

The voyageur's telegram had gone to General Ducros; and he, with the instinct of a soldier and a statesman, had instantly connected it with the greatest mistake that he had made in his life, his refusal to entertain the proposal which Doctor Emil Fargeau had laid before him. He saw that he had refused even to examine a scheme which this Anglo-American syndicate had somehow got hold of and thought it worth their while to spend thousands of pounds even in preliminary development. As he said to himself when the unwelcome news came to him, "I have committed a crime—for I have made a mistake, and for statesmen mistakes are something worse than crimes."

As soon as the Russian trapper's message had reached Count Valdemar, he immediately discussed it with his daughter, who over and over again had given proof of an almost clairvoyant insight into the most difficult and intricate concerns of international diplomacy. The moment she saw it her instinct led her back to the reception at the German Embassy in Petersburg.

"It was all very easy, after all, general," she said, when the dinner was over, and the coffee and liqueurs were on the table. "If you will pardon me saying so, it is in cases like this that the intuition of the woman outstrips the logical faculty of the man. You have asked me how I discovered the connection between the interview between yourself and Doctor Fargeau, which, as you say, ended somewhat unhappily for France, and this extraordinary purchase of a seemingly worthless landed property by Viscount Hardress."

"Ah yes," said the general, knocking the ash off his cigarette. "Statesmen are not supposed to make mistakes, but to you, Ma'm'selle, and Monsieur le Comte, I must confess, to my most intense chagrin, the man was an Alsatian, and had accepted the new order of things in the provinces, he was a German subject, and his son was a German officer on the general staff. What could I think?"

"My dear general," replied Sophie, after a long whiff at her yellow Russian cigarette, "your conclusions were perfectly just under the circumstances. But when you have had your interview with Captain Fargeau and my dear friend the marquise, I think you will find that, after all, they were erroneous. Do you not think so, papa?"

"I fancy," replied the count, slowly, "that when you have made your explanations to the general, he will agree with you."

"Very well, then, general, I will spin my little thread before you, and you shall see whether it holds together or not. First, there was that snatch of a conversation that I heard at the German Embassy reception in Petersburg. Captain Fargeau was talking with the late Prince de Condé, and he was called away by one of the servants. From another source I knew afterwards that he had received a telegram from Strassburg. He came back, and made a pretence of dancing with my very dear friend, Adelaide de Condé. They went out into the winter garden, just in front of myself and my partner. I heard him tell her that 'he' had succeeded, and gone to Paris.

"You have told me of his father's visit to you. The chief part of his scheme was the building of these works round the Magnetic Pole in Boothia Land. The prince and Adelaide go to a little out-of-the-way place in Germany, called Elsenau. The fashionable papers told us that. They also told us that Lord Orrel and his daughter were there; and almost the same day arrives this Viscount Branston, Lord Orrel's son. The prince suddenly and mysteriously dies—as they say, from the bursting of a blood-vessel on the brain. Of course, all the papers tell us of that, and also that Viscount Branston goes to Vienna and brings back Madame de Bourbon, who is here now, in Paris, with Adelaide.

"Before this, you and my father have the telegrams from our good friends out yonder in Canada. Then the Canadian and American papers confirm this, and tell us that this same Viscount Branston has leased this very spot of seemingly worthless land, which was, as you tell us, essential to the carrying out of Emil Fargeau's scheme, and that a great Anglo-American syndicate has been formed to build an observatory there, or a central station for the control of wireless telegraphy throughout the world; and so on. No doubt the newspaper stories are as familiar to you as they are to us. Now, general, do you see the connection between that scrap of conversation I heard in Petersburg, and the purchase of that patch of snow-covered rock in Boothia Land?"

"Ma'm'selle," replied the general, "it is not a thread, but a chain, and there is not a weak link in it. It is perfectly plain now that there is a connection between this German officer, at present on leave in Paris, and these English and Americans who have somehow become possessed of the details of the scheme which I so unfortunately rejected. Still, until we have heard what Captain Fargeau and your friend the Marquise de Montpensier, whom I am to have the honour of receiving to-morrow, have to say, it would not, I think, be wise to conclude that they have entered into a conspiracy with those whom I may describe as our common enemies."

"That, general, I do not believe for a moment," said the count. "All their interests lie the other way. They have as much reason to dislike England and America as we have; and, until I know to the contrary, I shall prefer to believe that the Marquise de Montpensier, a daughter of the Bourbons, is a friend to France, and therefore, through France, to Russia."

"And I believe that too," said Sophie. "As far as England and America are concerned, the interests of France and Russia are identical. If these arrogant Anglo-Saxons are ever to be put into their proper place, Russia and France must do it: and, to begin with, by some means or other, this scheme must be frustrated. And now, general, I have given you a little information to-night, and I am going to ask a little favour in return."

"It shall be granted, if possible. Ma'm'selle has only to ask it."

"There is, I believe," said Sophie, putting her arms on the table, "a little apartment leading out of your own bureau at the Ministry of War?"

General Ducros could not help raising his eyelids a little, for he knew that neither Sophie nor her father had ever been in that room, but he dropped them again instantly, and said:

"That is perfectly true, ma'm'selle; it is a little apartment, devoted to my own private use. In fact, to tell you the truth, I am sometimes there when it is convenient for my secretary to prove by ocular demonstration to some more or less important personage that I am not at home, and that, in consequence of my unavoidable absence, an undesirable interview has to be postponed."

"Exactly," laughed Sophie. "Such things are not unknown elsewhere; and I am going to ask you, general, for the use of that room during your interview to-morrow with the Marquise de Montpensier and Captain Fargeau. In other words, I wish to be present at the interview without doing anything to interrupt the smooth course of the proceedings."

"Ma'm'selle knows so much already that there is no reason why she should not know more," replied the general, not very cordially; "but, of course, it is understood, as a matter of honour between ourselves, that in this matter we are allies, as our countries are."

"Undoubtedly," replied the count. "It would, indeed, be mutually impossible for it to be otherwise."

"Then," said Sophie, "we will consider that a bargain. My father and I will call shortly before the captain and Adelaide reach the Ministry, and afterwards——"

"And afterwards, my dear general, if you will allow me to interrupt you," said the count, "I would suggest that we should have a little dinner here, to which Sophie will invite Madame de Bourbon and the marquise, as well as Captain Fargeau; a dinner which, if you will permit me to say so, may possibly be of historic interest; an occasion upon which, perhaps, the alliance between France and Russia will be cemented by a mutual agreement and arrangement to outwit these English-Americans, and secure the world-empire for France and Russia."

General Ducros assented. He saw that, owing to the fatal mistake he had made when he rejected Emil Fargeau's scheme, he was now, thanks to the subtle intellect of Sophie Valdemar, forced to share the possibility of obtaining that world-empire with Russia, the ally whose friendship had already cost France so dearly, an ally to whom France had paid millions for a few empty assurances and one or two brilliant scenes in the international spectacular drama. No one knew better than he did how worthless this alliance really was to France, and that night he reproached himself bitterly for letting slip the chance of making France independent of her blood-sucking ally. Still, by an extraordinary combination of chance and skill, Sophie Valdemar had got the necessary knowledge of the great secret, and, perforce, he had to share it with her and Russia.

Punctually at eleven o'clock the next morning Adelaide de Condé and Victor Fargeau were admitted to the bureau of the Minister of War. The interview was very different from the one that he had granted to the man whom his scepticism had practically driven to his death, and so placed the great secret in the hands of his country's enemies. It was also much shorter. When, at the outset, the general had addressed Victor as Captain Fargeau, he replied:

"Pardon, general, I am captain no longer, nor am I any longer a German. I have resigned. Henceforth I am a Frenchman in fact, as I have always been in heart. You would not believe that of my father, but I will prove it to you of myself."

"My dear sir," replied the general, "no one could be more delighted to hear such news as that than I; and I can promise you that, in that case, an appointment—not, of course, an acknowledged one, since you are not now legally a Frenchman—shall be placed at your disposal."

Adelaide turned her head away as he spoke, and her lips curled into a smile which made her look almost ugly. "So now he is to become a paid spy," she thought. "And he still considers that I am pledged to him. But what can I do till we have either succeeded or failed? Ah, if it were only the other one! If he were a Frenchman, or if only I could make him love me as I could—well, we shall see. After all, patriotism has its limits. France has broken its allegiance to my house. What do I owe it?"

General Ducros saw at a glance that the specifications which Victor handed to him were the duplicates of those which he had so unwisely and so unfortunately for himself and for France refused to accept from his father. If anything had been needed to convince him of the terrible error that he had made, Adelaide's story of the last night of her father's life would have done it.

"Monsieur," he said, laying his hand upon the papers, "I will confess that I have made a great mistake, even that I have committed a crime against France and your father. Alas, as we know now from the story that Ma'm'selle la Marquise has told us, he is dead; and it is I who, innocently and unknowingly, sent him to his death. I can do no more than admit my error, and promise you that every force at my command shall be used to repair it, if possible. These other documents, which you have been good enough to hand to me, I take, of course, as an earnest of your good faith and your devotion to France."

"I wonder what they are," said Sophie Valdemar, in her soul, as the Minister's words reached her ear through the closed door of the little private room. "An Alsatian, a German officer, Military Attaché at Petersburg, he resigns his commission, goes back to his French allegiance, and gives the general something which proves his good faith! Ah, perhaps a scheme of campaign—sketches of routes—details of mobilisation—plans of fortresses! We must fight Germany soon. I wonder whether I could persuade the good general to let me have a look at them, if they are anything of that sort."

While these thoughts were flashing through Sophie's mind, the general was saying:

"And now, monsieur, you mentioned a short time ago that you had a scheme for repairing the error which I have confessed. May I ask for an outline of it? I need hardly say that, if it is only feasible, France will spare neither money nor men to accomplish the object, and to regain what I have so deplorably lost."

"My scheme, general," said Victor, "is exceedingly simple. These English-Americans are going to erect storage works round the Magnetic Pole, which, as of course you know, is situated in the far north, in a sort of No-man's Land, untrodden by human feet once in half-a-century. Let France fit out an Arctic expedition of two ships. Let them be old warships—as the Alert and Discovery were in the English expedition. Their mission will, of course, be a peaceful one, and their departure will cause no comment save in the scientific papers, but in their holds the ships will carry the most powerful guns they can mount, ammunition, and——"

"Excellent!" interrupted the general, rising from his seat. "My dear monsieur, I congratulate you upon a brilliant idea. Yes, the expedition shall be prepared with all speed; the newspapers shall describe the ships as old ones, but the Minister of Marine and myself will arrange that they shall carry the best guns and the most powerful explosives that we have. They shall be manned by picked crews, commanded by our best officers; they shall sail for the North Pole, or thereabouts, as all these expeditions do, and they shall make a friendly call at Boothia Land. It will not be possible now before next summer because of the ice; but the same cause will delay our friends in building the storage works; and when our ships call and the works are well in progress—well, then, we will see whether or not our friends will yield to logic; and, if not, to force majeure. Is that your idea?"

"Exactly," replied Victor. "We will wait till the works are finished, say this time next year, or two years or three years, it matters nothing, and then we will take them. The expedition will carry men trained to do the work under my orders. I have the whole working of the apparatus in those papers. Once we possess the works we are masters of the world, because we shall be possessors of its very life. But before that there may be war—the nations of Europe fighting for the limbs of the Yellow Giant in the East. Germany, as you will see from those papers, is nearly ready. It is only a matter of a few months, and then she will make her first rush on France. England and America can be rendered helpless if we once seize the works, and Russia can, I presume, be trusted?"

"Without doubt," said the general. "Russia is our true and faithful ally."

"Yes," said Sophie again, in her soul; "provided she has a share in that Polar expedition, as she shall have."

CHAPTER XIII

Nearly a year had passed since General Ducros had dined with Count Valdemar and Ma'm'selle Sophie in Paris. It was Cowes week, and there was quite a cosmopolitan party at Orrel Court. Adelaide de Condé and Madame de Bourbon were the best of friends with Count Valdemar and Sophie. Clifford Vandel and Miss Chrysie were good friends with everybody, the latter especially good friends with Hardress, whose work was now rapidly approaching completion. In short, it was as charming a cosmopolitan party as you could have found on the Hampshire shore, or anywhere else; and none of the other guests of Lord Orrel, and there were several of them not unskilled in diplomacy, ever dreamt that under the surface of the smooth-flowing conversation, whether round the dinner-table at the Court, on the Nadine, which ran down the Southampton Water every day that there was a good race on, or at Clifford Vandel's bungalow at Cowes, whose smoothly shaven lawn sloped down almost to the water's edge, lay undercurrents of plot and counterplot, the issue of which was the question whether the dominion of the world was to be committed to Anglo-Saxon or Franco-Slav hands.

One night—it was the evening after the great regatta—three conversations took place under the roof of Orrel Court, which the greatest newspapers of the two hemispheres would have given any amount of money to be able to report, since each of them was possibly pregnant with the fate of the world.

When Clifford Vandel came up from the smoking-room a little after eleven he found Miss Chrysie waiting for him in the sitting-room of the suite of apartments that had been given to them in the eastern wing of the old mansion.

"Don't you think you ought to be in bed, Chrysie, instead of sitting there smoking a cigarette, and—Why, what's the matter with you, girl?"

He had begun with something like a note of reproach in his voice, but the last words were spoken in a tone of tender concern.

She got up from her chair, went to the door, and shut it and locked it, and then, with her half-smoked cigarette poised between her fingers, her face pale, and her eyes aflame, she faced him and said, in low, quick-flowing tones:

"Poppa, can't you see what's the matter?—you, who can see things months before they happen, and make millions by gambling on them?—you who did up Morgan himself over that wireless telegraphy combine—can't you see what's going on right here just under your nose?"

"My dear Chrysie, what are you talking about? I've not noticed anything particular happening, except what's happened in the right way. What's the trouble?"

"The trouble's that Frenchwoman—that second edition of Marie Antoinette. Can't you see what she's doing every hour and day of her life? Can't you see that she's as beautiful as an angel, and—well, as clever as the other thing, and that she's just playing her hand for all she's worth to get the man I want—the man I half-promised myself to a year ago!"

"Perhaps I've been too busy about other matters, and perhaps I never expected anything of the sort," replied her father; "and anyhow, men are fools at seeing this kind of thing; but if that's so, and you really do want him, why not promise yourself altogether and fix things up? There's no man I'd sooner have for a son-in-law; and if you want him, and he wants you, why——"

"It's just there, poppa, that I'm feeling bad about it," she said, coming nearer to him, and speaking with a little break in her voice. "I'm not so sure that he does want me now—at least, not quite as badly as he did that time when he asked me first in Buffalo. Don't you see that Frenchwoman's bewitched him? And who could blame him, after all? What do all the society papers say about her? The most beautiful woman in Europe—the great-great-grand-daughter of Louis the Magnificent himself, with the noblest blood of France in her veins! How could any man with eyes in his head and blood in his heart resist her? Why, I could no more compare with her than——"

"Than a wild rose in one of these beautiful English lanes could compare with a special variety of an orchid in a hothouse; and I guess, Chrysie, that if I haven't made a great mistake about Shafto Hardress—if he does get a bit intoxicated with the scent of the orchid, if it comes to winning and wearing the flower, he'll take the wild rose. If he doesn't—well, I guess you'll do pretty well without him."

"But I just can't do without him, poppa. You are the only one I'd tell it to, but that's so; and before that Frenchwoman gets him I'd have her out and shoot her. Women in her country fight duels. And there's more to it than that," she went on, after a little pause.

"And what might that be, Miss Fire-eater?" said her father, half-laughing, half-seriously.

"I believe that she and that Russian girl, who goes languishing around Shafto when the marquise or myself isn't around, know more than they should do about this storage scheme. I don't say I've been listening—I wouldn't do it—no, not even for them; but sometimes you can't help hearing; and only the day before yesterday, out in the grounds there, I heard both of them, not to each other, but at different times to Count Valdemar, mention the name of Victor Fargeau; and you know who he is—son of the man whose remains Shafto picked up at sea—creator of this great scheme of yours—a Frenchman who was an officer in the German army. Now listen: both these women are friends of General Ducros, the French War Minister. France is sending out the Polar expedition this year that she has been preparing for months—you know that; so has Russia. Do you see what I mean now?"

"I guess you've got me on my own ground there, Chrysie," said her father, laying his hand across her shoulders, and drawing her towards him. "You were dead right when you said that a woman's intuition can sometimes see quicker and farther than a man's reason; but on that kind of ground I guess I can see as well as anyone. I admit that I have been wondering a bit why just this particular year France and Russia should be sending two Polar expeditions out; but it's pretty well sure that if you hadn't seen that this French marquise and the Russian countess were after the man you want—and the man you're going to get, too, if he's the man I think he is—I shouldn't have seen what I see now."

"And what's that, poppa?"

"They're not Polar expeditions at all, Chrysie; those ships are no more trying to go to the North Pole than they're trying to find the source of the Amazon. You got the key that opens the whole show when you heard them talking about Victor Fargeau. They're going to Boothia Land, that's where they're going to, and they're not going on what the Russians generally call a voyage of scientific discovery. I'd bet every dollar we've got in the Trust that those ships have guns on them, and there's going to be a fight for that Magnetic Pole after all. Anyhow, there's a cable going across to Doctor Lamson the first thing to-morrow morning. If there's anything like that going on, he can't be on guard any too soon. And now, little girl," he went on, raising his hand and putting it on her head, "you go to bed, and don't you worry about Frenchwomen or Russians. Shafto Hardress comes of good old English and American stock, and he's just as clever as he can be without being altogether American. Don't you worry about him. There's not going to be any trouble in his mind when he has to choose between a clean-blooded, healthy American girl and anyone else, even if she has got all the blood of all the Bourbons in her veins, or even if she is the daughter of Count Valdemar of Russia, whose ancestors, I guess, were half savages when yours were gentlemen. Don't you worry about that, little girl; you just go to bed, and dream about the time when you'll be sitting on a throne that Marie Antoinette's wasn't a circumstance to. Now, I have told you, and that's so. Good-night. I'll have a talk with Lord Orrel to-morrow morning, and see to the business part of the affair."

As Chrysie crossed the long corridor to her own room she caught a glimpse of a tall, graceful figure which she had come to know only too well, and the sweep of a long, trailing skirt, vanishing through a door which she knew led into Count Valdemar's dressing-room.

"That's Sophie," she said. "I wonder if she saw me. She's been with the marquise, I suppose; and now she's going to have a talk with her father, something like mine with poppa. It's mean to listen, and I couldn't do it if I wanted to, but I'd like to give some of those dollars that poppa's going to make out of this scheme to hear what she's going to say, or what she's been saying to the marquise. I reckon I could make some history out of it if I knew; but anyhow, there's going to be trouble with that Frenchwoman. I don't think so much about the Russian. I believe she wants to marry either Lord Orrel or poppa; she's just about as mean as she is pretty and clever. I'd just like to say that English swear-word about her."

Miss Chrysie said that, and many other things, in her soul that night after she had laid her head on her pillow; and, even after the demands of physical fatigue upon a perfectly healthy physique had compelled slumber, she dreamt of herself as a modern Juno, usurping the throne of Jove, and wielding his lightnings, with the especial object of destroying utterly from the face of the earth two young ladies, with whom she was living on apparent terms of the most perfect friendship, and who were even then resting their pretty heads on pillows just like hers under the same roof.

CHAPTER XIV

Sophie opened the door in answer to her father's murmured "entrez," and closed it very gently behind her. She had not noticed Chrysie as she slipped into her own room, for her back was towards her, and, happily, she had no suspicion whatever of the conclusions which Chrysie's love-sharpened eyes had enabled her to reach. If she had, some skilfully-devised accident would probably have happened. For though but two people among the guests at Orrel Court knew it, there were spies both inside and around the great house, unscrupulous agents of an unscrupulous government, who would have carried out their orders at all hazards. In fact, they had been brought there by Count Valdemar, at his daughter's suggestion, to assist in working out the most daring conspiracy that had ever been hatched at an English country house.

"Well, papa," said Sophie, in her soft Russian, as she took a cigarette, and dropped into an easy-chair with a motion that was almost voluptuous in its gracefulness, "now that these good people have gone to bed, we shall be able to have a little quiet talk. Are you still of opinion that the scheme that I sketched out is feasible?"