The Wiles of the Wicked Part 44

"But at least you will give her my name, and tell her that I have something of urgent importance to communicate to her," I cried eagerly.

He hesitated. "If you are, as you allege, an old friend, I will place your card before her," he said at last, with some hesitation. "You may leave your address, and if Her Highness consents to receive you I will communicate with you."

"No," I answered in desperation; "I will remain and await her return."

"That is impossible," he responded. "She has many engagements, and certainly cannot receive you to-day."

I recollected that the letter I had found at Denbury made it plain that we had parted abruptly. If this man gave her my card without any word, it was more than likely that she would refuse to see me.

Therefore I entered into argument with him, but while I was speaking the door opened suddenly, and my love stood before me.

She halted there, elegantly dressed, having just returned from her drive, and for a moment we faced each other speechless.

"Mr Heaton!" she cried, and then, in breathless hurry arising from the sudden and joyful surprise, she rushed forward.

Our hands grasped. For the moment I could utter no word. The secretary, noticing our mutual embarra.s.sment, discreetly withdrew, closing the door after him.

Once again I found myself, after those six lost years, alone with my love.

"At last!" I cried. "At last I have found you, after all these months!" I was earnestly gazing into her great dark eyes. She had altered but little since that night long ago at The Boltons, when I had discovered the traces of that hideous tragedy.

"And why have you come back to me now?" she inquired in a low, strained voice.

"I have striven long and diligently to find you," I answered frankly, "because--because I wished to tell you how I love you--that I have loved you always--from the first moment that we met."

A grave expression crossed her countenance.

"And yet you forsook me! You calmly broke off the secret engagement that we had mutually made, and left me without a single word. You have married," she added resentfully, "therefore it is scarcely fitting that you should come here with a false declaration upon your lips."

"It is no false declaration, I swear," I cried. "As for my wife, I knew her not, and she is now dead."

"Dead!" she gasped. "You knew her not! I don't understand."

"I have loved you always--always, Princess--for I have only ten minutes ago ascertained your true rank--"

"Mabel to you--as always," she said, softly interrupting me.

"Ah, thank you for those words!" I cried, taking her small gloved hand.

"I have loved you from the first moment that we met at the colonel's, long ago--you remember that night?"

"I shall never forget it," she faltered in that low tone as of old, which was as sweetest music to my ears.

"And you remember that evening when I dined with you at The Boltons?" I said. "Incomprehensible though it may seem, I began a new life from that night, and for six whole years have existed in a state of utter unconsciousness of all the past. Will you consider me insane if I tell you that I have no knowledge whatever of meeting you after that night, and only knew of our engagement by discovering this letter among my private papers a couple of months ago?" and I drew her letter from my pocket.

"Your words sound most remarkable," she said, deeply interested.

"Relate the whole of the facts to me. But first come along to my own sitting-room. We may be interrupted here."

And she led the way to the end of the corridor, where we entered an elegant little salon, one of the handsome suite of rooms she occupied.

She drew forth a chair for me, and allowing a middle-aged gentlewoman-- her lady-in-waiting, I presume--to take her hat and gloves, we once more found ourselves alone.

How exquisitely beautiful she was! Yet her royal birth, alas! placed her beyond my reach. All my hopes and aspirations had been in an instant crushed by the knowledge of her rank. I could only now relate to her the truth, and seek her forgiveness for what had seemed a cruel injustice.

I took her unresisting hand, and told her how long ago I had loved her, not daring to expose to her the great secret of my heart. If we had mutually decided upon marriage, and I had deliberately deserted her, it was, I declared, because of that remarkable unconsciousness which had blotted out all knowledge of my life previous to that last night when we had dined together, and I had accompanied the man Hickman to his lodgings.

"But tell me all," she urged, "so that I can understand and judge accordingly."

And then, beginning at the beginning, I recounted the whole of the amazing facts, just as I have narrated them to the reader in these foregoing chapters.

I think the telling occupied most part of an hour; but she sat there, her lovely eyes fixed upon me, her mouth half open, held dumb and motionless by the strange story I unfolded. Once or twice she gave vent to e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns of surprise, and I saw that only by dint of supreme effort did she succeed in preserving her self-control. I told her everything. I did not seek to conceal one single fact.

"And he was actually murdered in my house?" she cried, starting up at last. "You were present?"

I explained to her in detail the events of that fateful night.

"Then at last the truth is plain!" she exclaimed. "You have supplied the key to the enigma for which I have been so long in search!"

"Tell me," I said, in breathless earnestness. "All these years I have been striving in vain to solve the problem."

She paused, her dark, fathomless eyes fixed upon me, as though lacking courage to tell me the truth.

"I deceived you, Wilford, from the first," she faltered, "I hid from you the secret of my birth, and it was at my request Colonel Channing--who, of course, knew me well when he was British Attache at Vienna--refused to tell you the truth. You wonder, of course, that I should live in England _incognita_. Probably, however, you know that my poor mother, the late Empress, loved England and the English. She gave me an English name at my baptism, and when only five years of age I was sent here to be educated. At seventeen I returned to Vienna, but soon became tired of the eternal glitter of palace life, and a year or two later, as soon as I was of age and my own mistress, I returned to London, took into my service Mrs Anson, the widow of an English officer well known to my mother, and in order to preserve my _incognita_ caused her to pa.s.s as my mother. I took the house at The Boltons, and only Colonel and Mrs Channing knew my real station. I was pa.s.sionately fond of music, and desired to complete my studies, besides which I am intensely fond of London and of life unfettered by the trammels which must hamper the daughter of an Emperor."

"You preferred a quiet, free life in London to that at your father's Court?"

"Exactly," she answered. "At twenty-one I had had my fill of life at Court, and found existence in London, where I was unknown, far more pleasant. Besides Mrs Anson, I had as companion a young Englishwoman who had been governess in a well-known family in Vienna. Her name was Grainger."

"Grainger?" I cried. "Edna Grainger?"

"The same. She was my companion. Well, after I had been established at The Boltons nearly a year I met, while on a visit to a country house, a young man with whom I became on very friendly terms--Prince Alexander, heir to the throne of Bulgaria. We met often, and although I still pa.s.sed as Mabel Anson, our acquaintanceship ripened into a mutual affection. With a disregard for the _convenances_, I induced Mrs Anson to invite him on several occasions to The Boltons. One morning, however, I received a private message from Count de Walkenstein-Trosburg, our amba.s.sador here, saying that he had received a cipher telegraphic dispatch that my father, the Emperor, was very unwell, and his Excellency suggested that I should return to Vienna.

This I did, accompanied by Mrs Anson, and, leaving the woman Grainger in charge of the household as usual, I wrote to the young Prince from Vienna, but received no reply, and when I returned a fortnight later searched for him in vain. He had mysteriously disappeared. A few days before, in my dreams, I had seen the fatal raven, the evil omen of my House, and feared the worst."

"Then the man who was murdered at The Boltons on that night was none other than Prince Alexander, the heir to the throne of Bulgaria!" I cried.

"Without a doubt," she answered. "What you have just told me makes it all plain. You took from the dead man's pocket a small gold pencil-case, and you will remember that I recognised it as one that I had given him. It was that fact which caused me to suspect you."

"Suspect me? Did you believe me guilty of murder?"

"I did not then know that murder had been committed. All that was known was that the heir to the throne had mysteriously disappeared. The terrible truth I have just learnt from your lips. The discovery that the little gift I had made to him was in your possession filled me with suspicion, and in order to solve the mystery I invoked the aid of the police-agent attached to our Emba.s.sy, and invited both of you to dine, in order that he might meet you. You will remember the man you met on that night?"

"Hickman!" I cried. "Was he really a police-agent?"

"Yes. He induced you, it appears, to go to a lodging he had taken for the purpose, and without my knowledge gave you a drugged cigar. You fell unconscious, and this enabled him to thoroughly overhaul your pockets, and also to go to your chambers during the night, either with your latch-key, and make a complete search, the result of which convinced us both that you had no hand in the missing man's disappearance, in spite of the fact that his dress-stud and pencil-case were in your possession. On the following morning, however, when you were but half conscious--Hickman having then returned from making his search at Ess.e.x Street--you accidentally struck your head a violent blow on the corner of the stone mantelshelf. This blow, so severe that they were compelled to remove you to the hospital, apparently affected your brain, for when I met you again a month later you seamed curiously vacant in mind, and had no recollection whatever of the events that had pa.s.sed."

"I had none, I a.s.sure you," I said.

"It seems marvellous that you should be utterly in ignorance of what followed," she went on, her sweet eyes still gazing deeply into mine.

"You told me how you loved me, and I, loving you in return, we entered upon a clandestine engagement that was to be secret from all. A few summer months went by, happy, joyous months, the most blissful in all my life, and then your love suddenly cooled. You had embarked in financial schemes in the City--you were becoming enriched by some concessions in Bulgaria, it was whispered--but your love for me slowly died, and you married a woman twice your age. Can you imagine my feelings? I was heart-broken, Wilford--utterly heart-broken."