"Ah! Teddy!" she cried, with sudden emotion. "How can I thank you sufficiently for those words? Take that horrible thing and hide it--hide it anywhere from my eyes, for sight of it brings all the past back to me. Yet--yet I was afraid," she went on, "I dare not hide it, lest any one should ask what had become of it, and thus suspicions might be aroused. Ah! every time I have come into this room it has haunted me--I seem to see that terrible scene before my eyes--how--how they----"
But she broke off short, and covering her face with both hands added, after a few seconds' silence:
"Ah! yes, take it away--never let me gaze upon it again. But I beg of you, dear, to--to preserve my secret--my terrible secret!"
"Not a single word shall pass my lips, neither shall a single soul see this knife. I will take it and cast it away--better to the bottom of the Thames. To-night it shall be in a place where it can never be found. So go to your room, and rest assured that you, darling, have at least one friend--myself."
I felt her breast heave and fall as I held her in my strong embrace.
Then without words she raised her white, tear-stained face and kissed me long and fondly; afterwards she left me, and in silence tottered from the room, closing the door after her.
I still held the knife in my hand--the weapon by which the terrible deed had been perpetrated.
What could I think? What would you, my reader, have thought if the woman you love stood in the same position as Phrida Shand--which God forbid?
I stood reflecting, gazing upon the antique poignard. Then slowly and deliberately I made up my mind, and placing the unsheathed knife in my breast pocket I went out into the hall, put on my coat and hat, and left the house.
Half an hour later I halted casually upon Westminster Bridge, and when no one was near, cast the ancient "Misericordia" into the dark flowing waters of the river, knowing that Edwards and his inquisitive assistants could never recover it as evidence against my love.
Four days later I received a letter from Frémy, dated from the Hotel National at Strasbourg, stating that he had traced the fugitives from Munich to the latter city, but there he had lost all trace of them. He believed they had gone to Paris, and with his chief's permission he was leaving for the French capital that night.