“Finally,” continued Lady Orlay, without heeding the interruption, “you come to me with a light in your eye which I have seen there only once or twice during nearly fifty years.  It means war, or something very like it—­the Vultures.”

She gave a little shiver as she looked round the room.  After a short silence Deulin rose suddenly and held out his hand.

“Good-bye,” he said.  “You are too discerning.  Good-bye.”

“You are going—?”

“Away,” he answered, with a wave of the hand descriptive of space.  “I must go and pack my trunks.”

Lady Orlay had not moved when Mr. Mangles came up to say good-night.  Miss Julia P. Mangles bowed in a manner which she considered impressive and the world thought ponderous.  Netty Cahere murmured a few timid words of thanks.

“We shall hope to see you again,” said Lady Orlay to Mr. Mangles.

“’Fraid not,” he answered; “we’re going to travel on the Continent.”

“When do you start?” asked her ladyship.

“To-morrow morning.”

“Another one,” muttered Lady Orlay, watching Mr. Mangles depart.  And her brief reverie was broken into by Reginald Cartoner.

“You have come to say good-bye,” she said to him.

“Yes.”

“You are going away again?”

“Yes.”

“And you will not tell me where you are going.”

“I cannot,” answered Cartoner.

“Then I will tell you,” said Lady Orlay, who, as Paul Deulin had said, was very experienced and very discerning.

“You are going to Russia, all of you.”

VII

AT THE FRONTIER

Daylight was beginning to contend with the brilliant electric illumination of the long platform as that which is called the Warsaw Express steamed into Alexandrowo Station.  There are many who have never heard of Alexandrowo, and others who know it only too well.

How many a poor devil has dropped from the footboard of the train just before these electric lights were reached—­to take his chance of crossing the frontier before morning—­history will never tell!  How many have succeeded in passing in and out of that dread railway station with a false passport and a steady face, beneath the searching eye of the officials, Heaven only knows!  There is no other way of passing Alexandrowo—­of getting in or out of the kingdom of Poland—­but by this route.  Before the train is at a standstill at the platform each one of the long corridor carriages is boarded by a man in the dirty white trousers, the green tunic and green cap, the top-boots, and the majesty of Russian law.  Here, whatever time of day or night, winter or summer, it is always as light as day, thanks to an unsparing use of electricity.  There are always sentries on the outer side of the train.  The platform is a prison-yard—­the waiting rooms are prison-yards.