"I deceived you," she went on in a hard, monotonous voice. "But only because I loved you so fondly, and dreaded that this man, who had long ago vowed to wreck my life, would expose, and thus part us. Yet I could not bring myself to commit the theft. How could I place upon you--the man who was all in all to me--the stigma of having traitorously sold your country's secrets? The man who held me enslaved, and whose attentions I had spurned, exulted in his malevolent revenge. Once he offered, if I would renounce all thought of you and treat him with more cordiality, to commit the theft himself; but I refused, determined at all hazards to remain with you as long as possible. Once it was thought that the secret convention would be sent to Warnham Hall, and I was compelled to go down there to devise some means of obtaining it. I found Dudley staying in the village, and we returned to London together. The end must soon come, I knew. Therefore I lived on in daily terror of what must follow. At last the day dawned on which I had to meet you at the Foreign Office, and filch from you the bond of nations. After breakfast I stood out on the lawn by the sunny river's brink, contemplating suicide rather than your ruin, when there rowed up to the steps Dudley Ogle, who hailed me, inviting me to pull up to Windsor, and there lunch with him. At once I accepted, and after embarking, told him of my dilemma, and besought his assistance. As you know, he was a good amateur conjurer, and skilled in feats of sleight-of-hand. Without thought of the consequences, he resolved to commit the theft for my sake, and when I had fully explained all the facts and given him the dummy envelope that the cunning chief of the _Okhrannoe Otdelenie_ had prepared, he turned the boat and put me ashore at `The Nook,' afterwards rowing rapidly down to Shepperton to change and go at once to London." "He did this because he loved you?" I exclaimed sternly.