The breakfast was served in the room abutting on the cliff in the dim light of a misty morning.

The lamps were alight on the table, and Paul was waiting when Maggie came down cloaked for her journey. Steinmetz had breakfasted.

They said good-morning, and managed to talk of ordinary things until Maggie was supplied with coffee and toast and a somewhat heavy, manly helping of a breakfast-dish. Then came a silence.

Paul broke it at length with an effort, standing, as it were, on the edge of the forbidden topic.

"Steinmetz will take you all the way," he said, "and then come back to me. You can safely trust yourself to his care."

"Yes," answered the girl, looking at the food set before her with a helpless stare. "It is not that. Can I safely trust Etta's memory to your judgment? You are very stern, Paul. I think you might easily misjudge her. Men do not always understand a woman's temptations."

Paul had not sat down. He walked away to the window, and stood there looking out into the gloomy mists.

"It is not because she was my cousin," said Maggie from the table; "it is because she was a woman leaving her memory to be judged by two men who are both--hard."

Paul neither looked round nor answered.

"When a woman has to form her own life, and renders it a prominent one, she usually makes a huge mistake of it," said the girl.

She waited a moment, and then she pleaded once more, hastily, for she heard a step approaching.

"If you only understood every thing you might think differently--it is because you cannot understand."

Then Paul turned round slowly.

"No," he said, "I cannot understand it, and I do not think that I ever shall."

And Steinmetz came into the room.

In a few minutes the sleigh bearing Steinmetz and Maggie disappeared into the gloom, closely followed by a couple of Cossacks acting as guard and carrying despatches.

So Etta Sydney Bamborough--the Princess Howard Alexis--came back after all to her husband, lying in a nameless grave in the churchyard by the Volga at Tver. Within the white walls--beneath the shadow of the great spangled cupola--they await the Verdict, almost side by side.

CHAPTER XLIV

KISMET

Between Brandon in Suffolk and Thetford in Norfolk runs a quiet river, the Little Ouse, where few boats break the stillness of the water. On either bank stand whispering beech-trees, and so low is the music of the leaves that the message of Ely's distant bells floats through them on a quiet evening as far as Brandon and beyond it.

Three years after Etta's death, in the glow of an April sunset, a Canadian canoe was making its stealthy way up the river. The paddle crept in and out so gently, so lazily and peacefully, that the dabchicks and other waterfowl did not cease their chatter of nests and other April matters as the canoe glided by.

So quiet, indeed, was its progress that Karl Steinmetz--suddenly white-headed, as strong old men are apt to find themselves--did not heed its approach. He was sitting on the bank with a gun, a little rifle, lying on the grass beside him. He was half-asleep in the enjoyment of a large Havana cigar. The rays of the setting sun, peeping through the lower branches, made him blink lazily like a large, good-natured cat.

He turned his head slowly, with a hunter's consciousness of the approach of some one, and contemplated the canoe with a sense of placid satisfaction.

The small craft was passing in the shadow of a great tree--stealing over the dark, unruffled depth. A girl dressed in white, with a large diaphanous white hat and a general air of brisk English daintiness, was paddling slowly and with no great skill.

"A picture," said Steinmetz to himself with Teutonic deliberation. "Gott im Himmel! what a pretty picture to make an old man young!"

Then his gray eyes opened suddenly and he rose to his feet.

"Coloss-a-al!" he muttered. He dragged from his head a lamentable old straw hat and swept a courteous bow.

"Mademoiselle," he said, "ah, what happiness! After three years!"

Maggie stopped and looked at him with troubled eyes; all the color slowly left her face.

"What are you doing here?" she asked. And there was something like fear in her voice.

"No harm, mademoiselle, but good. I have come down from big game to vermin. I have here a saloon rifle. I wait till a water-rat comes, and then I shoot him."

The canoe had drifted closer to the land, the paddle trailing in the water.

"You are looking at my white hairs," he went on, in a sudden need of conversation. "Please bring your boat a little nearer."

The paddle twisted lazily in the water like a fish's tail.

"Hold tight," he said, reaching down.

With a little laugh he lifted the canoe and its occupant far up on to the bank.

"Despite my white hairs," he said, with a tap of both hands on his broad chest.

"I attach no importance to them," she answered, taking his proffered hand and stepping over the light bulwark. "I have gray ones myself. I am getting old too."

"How old?" he asked, looking down at her with his old bluntness.

"Twenty-eight."

"Ah, they are summers," he said; "mine have turned to winters. Will you sit here where I was sitting? See, I will spread this rug for your white dress."

Maggie paused, looking through the trees toward the sinking sun. The light fell on her face and showed one or two lines which had not been there before. It showed a patient tenderness in the steady eyes which had always been there--which Catrina had noticed in the stormy days that were past.

"I cannot stay long," she replied. "I am with the Faneaux at Brandon for a few days. They dine at seven."

"Ah! her ladyship is a good friend of mine. You remember her charity ball in town, when it was settled that you should come to Osterno. A strange world, mademoiselle--a very strange world, so small, and yet so large and bare for some of us!"

Maggie looked at him. Then she sat down.

"Tell me," she said, "all that has happened since then."

"I went back," answered Steinmetz, "and we were duly exiled from Russia.

It was sure to come. We were too dangerous. Altogether too quixotic for an autocracy. For myself I did not mind, but it hurt Paul."

There was a little pause, while the water lapped and whispered at their feet.