There were no testamentary complications, which he had somewhat feared. His mother had only a life interest in the tiny estate which went, under his father’s will, to his sister Ellen. And Ellen did not count. Absorbed in her family cares, she would pass out of his life for ever without thought of regret. It would be the final falsehood. At breakfast, on the morning of the funeral, Ellen said suddenly, in her dour way: “I’ve been reading your book. It’s a pack of lies.” “It would have been if I had signed it John Briggs,” he answered. “But everything in it is true about Alexis Triona.” “Your ways don’t seem to be our ways, John,” she remarked coldly. He felt the words like a slap in the face. He flushed with anger. “How dare you?” “I’m sorry,” she answered. “I oughtn’t to have said it with mother lying cold upstairs.” He shrugged his shoulders, forced to accept the evasive apology. But her challenge rankled. They parted stonily after the funeral, with the perfunctory handshake. “I don’t suppose I shall ever see you again.” “It’s rather unlikely,” said he. “Well, good-bye.” “Good-bye.” He threw himself back in the taxi-cab with a great sigh of relief. Thank God the nightmare of the past few days was over. Now to awaken to the real and wonderful things of life—the miraculous love of the dark-eyed, quivering princess of his dreams: the work which since he had loved her had grown into the sacred aim of their perfect lives. And just as he had wired her from Newcastle announcing his sailing, so did he wire her when he reached the railway station. “Arrived. All well. Speeding straight to you with love and longing.” Olivia smiled as she kissed the telegram. No one but her Alexis would have used the word “speeding.” CHAPTER XIV SHE was waiting for him at the little South Coast station, where decorum had to cloak the rapture of their meeting. But they sat close together, hand in hand, in the hackney motor-car that took them home. This gave him an intermediary breathing space for explanation; and the explanation was easier than he had feared. Really, his journey had been almost for nothing and had afforded little interest. The agent whom he was to interview having been summoned back to Russia the day before he arrived, he had merely delivered his dispatches to the British authorities and taken the next boat to England. It was just a history of two dull sea voyages. Nothing more was to be said about it, save that he would go on no more fool’s errands for a haphazard government. “Besides, it’s too dreadful to be away from you.” “It has been awful for me, too,” said Olivia. “I never imagined what real loneliness could feel like. All the time I thought of the poor solitary little dab the Bryce children showed us the other day in the biscuit-tin of water. Oh, I was the most forsaken little dab.”