There entered Ivan Féodor Vassilitch. The lines of his face relaxed at sight of her, and a smile almost of sweetness raised his black moustache. "Why do you not light your English country roads?" he demanded, laughing. "I had only the light of your window to guide me for a mile." "Pardon; they are not my roads," she answered, in the same bright spirit of banter. "I am not yet naturalized. Where have you been?" [Illustration: "THERE ENTERED IVAN FÉODOR VASSILITCH."] "To Russia." He spoke the truth. "Ah!" Instantly she became serious. "And you returned----?" "Yesterday." "Will you sit down, monsieur?" She spoke with a palpable effort. Some emotion had robbed her of breath. "Shall we go straight to our subject?" asked Vassilitch, perfectly controlled, as he always was. "For what else are you here?" "My first thought was that I should see you; my second was that I had a more definite errand." He bore her sudden coldness so steadily that she was compelled to relent. "Well," she said, "I am very pleased to see you, monsieur." "You are exceedingly kind. On the day following the evening on which I received your instructions I set about the business, and I was not long in finding the man who worked you and yours so great a wrong." "Not long? Impossible that he was in England?" "On the contrary, mademoiselle, he was in this country. Do not ask me how I discovered him. As an ex-officer of Cossacks you will understand that my inquiries were respected. The task was not difficult; in fact, it was ridiculously easy." "Why do you laugh like that? You found this monster; what then?" "He went to Russia. I went also." "And you challenged him there?" cried Gabrielle, and the womanly softness fled from her eyes. "I did not." "Monsieur! monsieur!" "Listen. He returned to England; and I, too, followed." "What! You permitted him to escape? You lost this chance?" "Mademoiselle, there is one thing which both of us overlooked--or, rather, of which we were in ignorance." "That you were afraid?" said Gabrielle, rising to her feet, with a world of scorn and anger in her beautiful face. Vassilitch regarded her with steadiness; he took the word as he would have taken a pistol ball, and again she relented. "Forgive me," she said. "I was hasty; I wronged you." "Mademoiselle, the Queen can do no wrong." He took the hand she gave him, made as if he would have raised it to his lips, then released it with infinite gentleness. "The one important point that we overlooked," he continued, "is that this man--I wonder if you can guess?" "No, no. Go on." "----is that this man loves you, mademoiselle." "Loves--me?" "So I discovered. You are his guiding star. To you his life points; round you it revolves. Parted from you by an infinite distance, he is yet bound to you by the strongest of laws, and can no more escape your sway than the earth the pole-star to which it looks, about which it rolls. And knowing this, I could not kill him--just yet."