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.