Madam Gordeloup Retires From British Diplomacy

The reader must be asked to accompany me once more to that room in Mount Street in which poor Archie practised diplomacy, and whither the courageous Doodles was carried prisoner in those moments in which he was last seen of us.  The Spy was now sitting alone before her desk, scribbling with all her energy—­writing letters on foreign policy, no doubt, to all the courts of Europe, but especially to that Russian court to which her services were more especially due.  She was hard at work, when there came the sound of a step upon the stairs.  The practised ear of the Spy became erect, and she at once knew who was her visitor.  It was not one with whom diplomacy would much avail, or who was likely to have money ready under his glove for her behoof.  “Ah!  Edouard, is that you?  I am glad you have come,” she said, as Count Pateroff entered the room.

“Yes, it is I. I got your note yesterday.”

“You are good—­very good.  You are always good.”  Sophie, as she said this, went on very rapidly with her letters—­so rapidly that her hand seemed to run about the paper wildly.  Then she flung down her pen, and folded the paper on which she had been writing with marvellous quickness.  There was an activity about the woman in all her movements which was wonderful to watch.  “There,” she said, “that is done; now we can talk.  Ah!  I have nearly written off my fingers this morning.”  Her brother smiled, but said nothing about the letters.  He never allowed himself to allude in any way to her professional duties.

“So you are going to St. Petersburg?” he said.

“Well—­yes, I think.  Why should I remain here spending money with both hands and through the nose?” At this idea the brother again smiled pleasantly.  He had never seen his sister to be culpably extravagant as she now described herself.  “Nothing to get and every thing to lose,” she went on saying.

“You know your own affairs best,” he answered.

“Yes, I know my own affairs.  If I remained here I should be taken away to that black building there;” and she pointed in the direction of the workhouse, which fronts so gloomily upon Mount Street.  “You would not come to take me out.”

The count smiled again.  “You are too clever for that, Sophie, I think.”

“Ah! it is well for a woman to be clever, or she must starve—­yes, starve!  Such a one as I must starve in this accursed country if I were not what you call clever.”  The brother and sister were talking in French, and she spoke now almost as rapidly as she had written.  “They are beasts and fools, and as awkward as bulls—­yes, as bulls.  I hate them—­I hate them all.  Men, women, children, they are all alike.  Look at the street out there.  Though it is Summer, I shiver when I look out at its blackness.  It is the ugliest nation!  And they understand nothing.  Oh, how I hate them!”

“They are not without merit.  They have got money.”