Ah! time has not effaced her memory. My sorrow is still as bitter to-day as it was in that cold December dawn, with the horrors of war around me. My life has become soured, and my hair grey. Since that eventful night, I have wandered in strange lands, endeavouring to stifle my grief; for, still under sentence of death as a spy, I have been an exile and an outlaw until to-day. What, you ask, has become of _her_? Far away, in a secluded valley in the Harz, under the shadow of the mystic Brocken, there is a plain white cross in the village burying-ground, bearing the words, "Rose Henault, 1872." My enemy, Paul Olbrich, a year after the war had ended, succeeded to the family title and estates; and to-day he is one of the most prominent men in Europe, and acts as the diplomatic representative of Germany at a certain Court that must be nameless. Truly, Fate has been unkind to me. To-day, for the first time, I have taken my skeleton from its cupboard. Would that I could bury it forever! CHAPTER TEN. FORTUNE'S FOOL. I am no longer myself. I vanished involuntarily. Truth to tell, I was befooled by Fortune. As confidential messenger in the service of the Bank of France, it was my duty to convey notes and bullion to various European capitals, and so constantly did I travel between London and Paris, and to Rome, Berlin, and Vienna, that my long journeys became terribly irksome, and I longed for rest and quiet. There is much excitement and anxiety in such a life, when one is entrusted with large sums of money which are impossible to hide in one's pocket. In the year 1883, England, as is frequently the case, was remitting a quantity of gold coin to France, and consequently, during the month of June, I was making two, and sometimes three, journeys between Paris and London weekly. Incessant travelling, such as this, soon wearies even those inured to long railway journeys, especially if one very often has to arrive in London in the morning only to leave again the same night. A long trip, say to the Austrian or Turkish capitals, was much more to my taste than the wearying monotony of the Dover-Calais route, and the inevitable turmoil between Paris and the English metropolis. One warm night--although excessively tired, having arrived in London at an early hour that morning--I was compelled to return, and left Charing Cross by the mail train at half-past eight. I had with me a box from the Bank of England containing a large quantity of bullion. As far as Dover I was alone, smoking and dozing over a newspaper, but when I alighted on the pier, the weather had changed. It rained in torrents, and a violent wind was blowing in a manner that was indicative of a "dirty" night.