“Your father?”

“Yes”—­with a brief smile—­“I am the sister whose existence you discovered.”

For a moment Diana was silent.  It had never occurred to her to connect Max and Olga in any way; the latter had always seemed to her to be more or less at open enmity with him.

Immediately her heart contracted with the old haunting fear.  What, then, was Adrienne to Max?

“Go on,” she whispered at last, under her breath.  “Go on.”

“I’ve never forgiven my father”—­Olga spoke with increasing passion.  “For his happiness with his English wife, Max and I have paid every day of our lives! . . .  As soon as I was of age, I refused the State allowance granted me as a daughter of Boris Mazaroff, and left the Ruvanian Court.  Since then I’ve lived in England as plain Miss Lermontof, and earned my own living.  Not one penny of their tainted money will I touch!”—­fiercely.

“But Max—­Max!” broke in Diana.  “Tell me about Max!” Olga’s personal quarrel with her country held no interest for a woman on the rack.

“Max?” Olga shrugged her shoulders.  “Max is either a saint or a fool—­God knows which!  For his loyalty to the House that branded him with a stigma, and to the woman who robbed him of his heritage, has never failed.”

“You mean—­Adrienne?” whispered Diana, as Olga paused an instant, shaken by emotion.

“Yes, I mean Adrienne—­Nadine Mazaroff.  Her parents were killed in the Ruvanian revolution—­butchered by the mob on the very steps of the palace.  But she herself was saved by my brother.  At the time the revolt broke out, he was living in Borovnitz, the capital, and he rushed off to the palace and contrived to rescue Nadine and get her away to England.  Since then, while the Royalist party have been working day and night for the restoration of the Mazaroffs, Max has watched over her safety.”  She paused, resuming with an accent of jealous resentment:  “And it has been no easy task.  German money backed the revolution, in the hope that when Ruvania grew tired of her penny-farthing republic—­as she was bound to do—­Germany might step in again and convert Ruvania into a little dependent State under Prussia.  There’s always a German princeling handy for any vacant throne!”—­contemptuously—­“and in the event of a big European War, Ruvania in German hands would provide an easy entrance into Russia.  So you see, Nadine, alive and in safety, was a perpetual menace to the German plans.  For some years she was hidden in a convent down in the West Country, not very far from Crailing, and after a while people came to believe that she, too, had perished in the revolution.  It was only then that Max allowed her to emerge from the convent, and by that time she had grown from a young, unformed girl into a woman, so that there was little danger of her being recognised by any casual observer—­or even by the agents of the anti-royalist party.”