"As well ask me whether I am a woman, father," she replied, with a low, wicked-sounding laugh. "Have I no eyes in my head? Did not this fair American interfere with my plan for securing the noble Shafto to ourselves by making him fall in love with her before I saw him, and have I not done everything, all the thousand and one little things that a woman can do, to help my dear friend the marquise to the attainment of her very evident desires? In other words, have I forgotten the lessons that you have been teaching me since you began to train me to think myself not a girl with a heart and a soul, and living blood in her veins, but only a human machine, fair to look upon, animated by a brain which knows no other duty than the service of our Holy Russia? You know that if I had loved this man myself it would have been just the same. I should have done exactly as I have done,--at least, I believe so." "Ah," laughed the count, softly, "that is the problem, my dear Sophie; and that, I tell you frankly, has always been my fear for you. You are young, brilliant, and beautiful; and I've always been a little afraid that out of some of all your admirers whom your smiles have brought to your feet there might be one whom you might love; and when a woman loves she pities, and pity and diplomacy have as much to do with each other as charity and business. Still, I am not without hopes that some day you will meet some worthy son of Russia; and remember, my Sophie, that, if we succeed in this, if we place the control of the elixir vitæ of the world in the hand of Russia, you might look even near the throne itself." "And I most certainly should," said Sophie, throwing her head back. "I tell you frankly, papa, I'm not doing all this for nothing. I am not forgetting that I am a woman, with all a woman's natural feelings and inspirations, all her possible loves and hopes and pities, only for the sake of serving even Russia. If I succeed I shall have my reward, and it shall be a splendid one." "And you will have well deserved it," said the count, looking with something more than fatherly pride on the beautiful daughter who had learnt the lessons of what he was pleased to call diplomacy so well. "Still, I cannot disguise from myself that this last scheme of yours is, to say the least of it, a desperate one; for it amounts to nothing less than a kidnapping of one of the best-known noblemen and statesmen in England, his son and daughter, one of the wealthiest and best-known American financiers in the world and his daughter; to say nothing of one of the Ministers of the Tsar and his daughter. I need hardly remind you, of course, that the failure of such a venture would never be forgiven in Petersburg. I need not tell you that the Little Father never pardons mistakes, and, besides, my dear Sophie, have you quite satisfied yourself that such a very extreme measure is absolutely necessary?"