"Yes. He induced you, it appears, to go to a lodging he had taken for the purpose, and without my knowledge gave you a drugged cigar. You fell unconscious, and this enabled him to thoroughly overhaul your pockets, and also to go to your chambers during the night, either with your latch-key, and make a complete search, the result of which convinced us both that you had no hand in the missing man's disappearance, in spite of the fact that his dress-stud and pencil-case were in your possession. On the following morning, however, when you were but half conscious--Hickman having then returned from making his search at Essex Street--you accidentally struck your head a violent blow on the corner of the stone mantelshelf. This blow, so severe that they were compelled to remove you to the hospital, apparently affected your brain, for when I met you again a month later you seamed curiously vacant in mind, and had no recollection whatever of the events that had passed." "I had none, I assure you," I said. "It seems marvellous that you should be utterly in ignorance of what followed," she went on, her sweet eyes still gazing deeply into mine. "You told me how you loved me, and I, loving you in return, we entered upon a clandestine engagement that was to be secret from all. A few summer months went by, happy, joyous months, the most blissful in all my life, and then your love suddenly cooled. You had embarked in financial schemes in the City--you were becoming enriched by some concessions in Bulgaria, it was whispered--but your love for me slowly died, and you married a woman twice your age. Can you imagine my feelings? I was heart-broken, Wilford--utterly heart-broken." "But I knew not what I was doing," I hastened to declare. "I loved you always--always. My brain had been injured by that blow, and all my tastes and feelings thereby became inverted." "I remained in England a few weeks longer, wandering aimlessly hither and thither, and then at last returned to Vienna and plunged into the vortex of gaiety at Court, in order to forget my sorrow." "And that woman Grainger? What of her?" "She left my service about a month after that night when you met with your accident at The Boltons. I have not seen her since." I then related how for the past month I had been closely watching her, and repeated the conversation I had overheard at Hull between her and her visitors on the previous night. "The woman, after leaving my service, has, it seems, somehow become an agent of the Bulgarian Government. She knows the truth," she said decisively. "We must obtain it from her." "It was a woman who struck the young Prince down!" I exclaimed quickly. "Of that I am certain." My wife reflected for a brief instant. "Perhaps," she said. "That woman was jealous of the attention he paid me." CHAPTER THIRTY. CONCLUSION.