"I have been buried a year in the snows of Siberia," wrote Pierre, "upon the secret service of the Czar.

I was ill of a fever for long months upon my return, and now I am coming to take you to my heart, never to be parted any more." The address of his banker in Paris, all the plans for their voyage to Russia, even the tender messages to the sister of his love--all these were the last goad to a maddened man, whose raging invective and brutal violence drove a weeping woman out into the cheerless night.

He deemed her the Russian's cherished mistress.

With a shudder Alixe Delavigne recalled the white face of the discarded mother, whose babe slumbered in peace, while the half-demented woman fled away to the shelter of the house of an old French nurse.
The morrow, when Hugh Fraser bade her also leave his house forever, was pictured again in her mind, and the insolent gift of the hundred-pound note, with the words, "Go and find your sister! Never darken my door again!" She had taken that money and used it to save her sister's life.
The darkened sick-chamber, the flight across the channel, and the rugged path which led Valerie, at last, to die in peace in Pierre Troubetskoi's arms--all this returned to the resolute avenger of a sister who had died, dreaming of the little childish face hidden from her forever, "He shall pay the price of his safety to the uttermost farthing, to the last little humiliation," she cried, starting up as Alan Hawke stood before her, for the hour of ten had stolen upon her.

"Nadine shall love her mother, and that love shall bridge the silent gulf of Death!" "You have been agitated ?" he gently said, for there were tell-tale tears upon her lashes.