Before she could recover, Bristow passed her and grasped the Professor’s hand. “I’m delighted to see you safe again, Professor,” he declared. “Mrs. Bristow and I had about given you up. She felt very strongly about your fate.... Olga! Shake hands with Professor Shishkin.” The Professor had managed to keep his self-possession. Though Olga’s presence was a surprise she was not to him as one returned from the dead, as he was to her. Mingled with his surprise was a feeling of enormous relief. Olga seemed to have appeared in direct answer to his prayers, to enable him to submit to her the question of her future. The need for caution still remained, however, and controlled him. Quietly he and Olga pressed each other’s hands, putting off to the future the more intimate welcoming that would come. Bristow drew a long breath of relief as he saw them. It did not occur to him to look at Florence; in fact, for the moment he had forgotten her. Demidroff relieved the situation. So sure of the facts and so full of his approaching triumph was he, that he was less observant than usual and saw nothing suspicious in the greeting. Nor did it occur to him to look at Florence, not dreaming that the meeting of the Professor and Mrs. Bristow could be of interest to her. Eagerly he pressed on with his program. “I’m glad to see you, Mr. Bristow,” he proclaimed. “You are the man above all others I would have hoped for. Through the Consolidated Press, you can lay before the world the amazing tale I have to tell.” The reporter pricked up his ears. If Demidroff characterized a tale as amazing, it was worth listening to. “Twenty years ago,” went on the Baron, “Count Lladislas Metrovitch, a Pole and a professor in the University here, was arrested for participation in a plot against the Czar. Whether he was guilty or not does not matter now. He was convicted and was imprisoned in a fortress. After three years it was reported that he was dead. The truth was that he had escaped. “His first act was to look for his family. He learned that his wife had died shortly after his arrest, and that his daughter was being cared for by the Grand Duke Ivan, who had known him and his wife. By some means, he got into the Grand Duke’s palace. He saw there a child about four years old, which was the age of his own child, and from various circumstances concluded that she was his own child. He was deceived; she was not his own. She was the little Princess Yves Napraxine, daughter of the Grand Duke. But, unknowing, he stole her and escaped to America, where he took the name of Shishkin.” The Baron paused and glanced around to note the effect of his story. He need not have feared; his listeners, one and all, were hanging breathlessly on his words. The thoughts of each differed from those of the rest, but there was not one to whom the recital did not come sharply home. Bristow and Olga, especially, were beginning to realize what this might mean. No one had yet thought of Florence.