CHAPTER X

A fortnight later Count Leven informed his wife that he was going home on a short leave, but that she might stay in London if she pleased.  An aunt of his had died in Warsaw, he said, leaving him a small property, and in spite of the disturbed state of his own country it was necessary that he should go and take possession of the land without delay.

Lady Maud did not believe a word of what he said, until it became apparent that he had the cash necessary for his journey without borrowing of her, as he frequently tried to do, with varying success.  She smiled calmly as she bade him good-bye and wished him a pleasant journey; he made a magnificent show of kissing her hand at parting, and waved his hat to the window when he was outside the house, before getting into the four-wheeler, on the roof of which his voluminous luggage made a rather unsafe pyramid.  She was not at the window, and he knew it; but other people might be watching him from theirs, and the servant stood at the open door.  It was always worth while, in Count Leven’s opinion, to make an ‘effect’ if one got a chance.

Three days later Lady Maud received a document from the Russian Embassy informing her that her husband had brought an action to obtain a divorce from her in the Ecclesiastical Court of the Patriarch of Constantinople, on the ground of her undue intimacy with Rufus Van Torp of New York, as proved by the attested depositions of detectives.  She was further informed that unless she appeared in person or by proxy before the Patriarch of Constantinople within one month of the date of the present notice, to defend herself against the charges made by her husband, judgment would go by default, and the divorce would be pronounced.

At first Lady Maud imagined this extraordinary document to be a stupid practical joke, invented by some half-fledged cousin to tease her.  She had a good many cousins, among whom were several beardless undergraduates and callow subalterns in smart regiments, who would think it no end of fun to scare ‘Cousin Maud.’  There was no mistaking the official paper on which the document was written, and it bore the seal of the Chancery of the Russian Embassy; but in Lady Maud’s opinion the mention of the Patriarch of Constantinople stamped it as an egregious hoax.

On reflection, however, she decided that it must have been perpetrated by some one in the Embassy for the express purpose of annoying her, since no outsider could have got at the seal, even if he could have obtained possession of the paper and envelope.  As soon as this view presented itself, she determined to ascertain the truth directly, and to bring down the ambassadorial wrath on the offender.

Accordingly she took the paper to the Russian clerk who was in charge of the Chancery, and inquired who had dared to concoct such a paper and to send it to her.