“Is it necessary at this late day to restore it?” she asked, making as if to detach the locket from its chain. But Wilfrid gently restrained her. “It could not be in a fairer place.” The Duchess’s story cast light upon some matters hitherto dark; it explained, for example, her recognition of him at the inn of the Silver Birch. And she had kept his miniature for more than eight years, ever since she was a girl of fourteen! It was upon her breast now! Was that its usual place? If so, and if the fact had become known to Baranoff, it would explain why that minister had concluded that the Duchess must be in love with Wilfrid; if love, a seemingly hopeless case, since it was not probable that she would ever meet again the man that had saved her life. Did she often look at the portrait within the locket? he wondered. And now that the original was beside her, with what sentiments did she regard him? Gratitude for saving her life? gratitude deep and sincere, but nothing more? Wilfrid made up his mind that he would find out that very night. “Question one having been answered in full,” he smiled, “there comes question two—your name?” “I should like first to hear whom you think me to be? You must have formed some notion.” “Am I right in supposing that you are a grand-daughter of the Czar, Ivan VI.?” The Duchess received this question with a merry laugh, the first Wilfrid had heard from her, a laugh so rippling and sweet that he was sorry when it had ceased. “What gave you that idea?” she asked. “A paragraph in the English _Times_,” replied Wilfrid, repeating the passage; for, under the belief that it referred to the Duchess, it had been no task, but a pleasure, to learn it by heart. “And you took me to be the lady meant? She never had any existence. If you had seen the _Times_ just a week later you would have found that same correspondent withdrawing the story as an idle rumour, and apologising to his English readers for having led them astray. A grand-daughter of Ivan! I have not a drop of Muscovite blood in my veins. I am as you are—a foreigner in Russia.” Somehow Wilfrid was pleased to think that she was of a nationality other than Russ, although her statement increased his perplexity since, as she was not connected by blood with the Imperial house of Romanoff, how came she to be politically so great, as she undoubtedly was, according to the account both of herself and of Baranoff? Was she a member of some other royal house of Europe, and being, for some reason or other, viewed with jealousy by the reigning head, had she been sent into a sort of quasi-banishment to the Russian Court, whose orders were to exercise a strict surveillance over her conduct, and, above all, to see that she did not fall in love? Why would she not explain, and end all this mystery? “I was born Princess Marie,” she continued, “and Princess Marie is the name I love, and the name my friends still call me by.” “Then you shall be Princess Marie to me, and——”