Before me stood my love, a slim, tragic, rather wan figure in a heavy
dark traveling-coat and felt toque, her sweet lips parted and a look of
bewildered amazement upon her countenance as I burst in so suddenly upon
her.
In silence I grasped her tiny black-gloved hand, and then, also in
silence, raised it passionately to my eager lips. Her soft, dark
eyes--those eyes that spoke although she was mute--met mine, and in them
was a look that I had never seen there before--a look which as plainly
as any words told me that my wild fevered passion was reciprocated.
She gazed beyond into the room where the others had assembled, and then
looked at me inquiringly, whereupon I led her forward to where they
were, and Muriel fell upon her and kissed her with tears streaming from
her eyes.
"I prepared this surprise for you, Mr. Gregg," Muriel said, laughing
through her tears of joy. "Olinto learnt that she was on her way to
London, and I sent him to meet her. The Princess has managed
magnificently, has she not?"
"Yes. Thank God she is free!" I exclaimed. "But we must induce her to
tell us everything."
Muriel was already helping my love out of her heavy Russian coat, a
costly garment lined with sable, and when, after greeting Jack and
Olinto, she was comfortably seated, I took some notepaper from the
little writing-table by the window and scribbled in pencil the words:
"I need not write how delighted I am that you are safe--that the
Almighty has heard my prayers for you. Jack and Muriel have told me all
about Leithcourt and his scoundrelly associates. I know, too, dear--for
I may call you that, may I not?--how terribly you must have suffered in
silence through it all. Leithcourt is dead. He sank the yacht with all
the stolen property on board, but by accident was himself engulfed."
Bending and watching intently as I wrote, she drew back in horror and
surprise at the words. Then I added: "We are all four determined that
the guilty shall not go unpunished, and that the affliction placed upon
you shall be adequately avenged. You are my own love--I am bold enough
to call you so. Some strong but mysterious bond of affinity between us
caused me to seek you out, and your pictured face seemed to call me to
your side although I was unaware of your peril. I was sent to you by the
unseen power to extricate you from the hands of your enemies. Therefore
tell us everything--all that you know--without fear, for now that we are
united no harm can assail us."
She took the pencil, and holding it in her white fingers sat staring
first at us, and then looking hesitatingly at the white paper before
her. Her position, amid a hundred conflicting emotions, was one of
extreme difficulty. It seemed as though even now she was loth to reveal
to us the absolute truth.
Muriel, standing behind her chair, tenderly stroked back the wealth of
chestnut hair from her white brow. Her complexion was perfect, even
though her face was pale and jaded, and her eyes heavy, consequent upon
her long, weary journey from the now frozen North.
Presently, when by signs both Jack and Olinto had urged her to write, she bent suddenly, and her pencil began to run swiftly over the paper.
All of us stood exchanging glances in silence, neither looking over her, but each determined to wait in patience until the end. Once started, however, she did not pause. Sheet after sheet she covered. The silence for a long time was complete, broken only by the rapid running of the pencil over the rough surface of the paper. She had apparently become seized by a sudden determination to explain everything, now that she saw we were in real, dead earnest.
I watched her sweet face bent so intently, and as the firelight fell
across it found it incomparable. Yes; she was afflicted by loss of
speech, it was true, yet she was surely inexpressibly sweet and womanly, peerless above all others.
With a deep-drawn sigh she at last finished, and, her head still bowed
in an attitude of humiliation, it seemed, she handed what she had
written to me.
In breathless eagerness I read as follows: