As I sat opposite her, watching her seductive smiles, these words recurred to me, and I wondered whether the allegations of the Secretary of the Embassy was true. I recollected also, when, with tears in those brilliant eyes, she had besought me to intercede on her father's behalf, how she told me distinctly that Sekerzhinski, the Chief of Police, had made charges against them cruel and false. Certainly when she had come to me humbly imploring the protection of the British Government against the persecution of her accusers she had none of the swagger of the adventuress. Even now, dressed in plain mourning, with no jewellery except the single golden bangle which I remembered she had worn when we before met, I could not bring myself to think that she was actually the desperate criminal that my friend Paul Verblioudovitch would have me believe. Knowing, as I did, how the Tzar's emissaries followed and captured by all manner of subtle devices those suspected of revolutionary conspiracy, I was again convinced, as I had been two years ago, that Sonia was a conspirator against the life of his Majesty. She certainly was not a common criminal. As she chatted to me, young, refined, sad-eyed, there were in her face unmistakable traces of anxiety and suffering. Finding that she absolutely refused to say anything further regarding the woman I adored, I began to question her as to her own happiness and future. "Ah," she sighed, "I am lonely, dull, and unhappy now that my father is no longer alive. Together we shared months of terrible hardship, of semi-starvation, hiding in the frozen wilds of the North, and ever pushing forward through that great lonely land towards our goal of freedom. Often and often we were compelled to exist on roots and leaves, and more than once we were compelled to face death," and she shuddered. "The recollection of that terrible journey is to me like some hideous nightmare, for to escape detection we often travelled by night, in terror of the wolves, and guided only by the brilliant stars high in the bright, frosty sky. The knowledge of our fate if caught-- the mines in far Siberia--held us in dread and hastened our footsteps. Thus, clad only in tattered rags, we went forward shivering, knowing that to halt meant certain death. Not until after three long months of suffering did we reach Stockholm, where we once more awakened to the joys of life, but then, alas! they had in them the dregs of bitterness. Two days after regaining our liberty, the news reached us that my poor mother had died at the roadside while chained to a gang of desperate convicts on their long and weary journey to Lake Baikal, the most dreaded district in all Asiatic Russia. The Almighty spared her the horrors of the fever-infected _etapes_ and the gloom and torture of the mines, but from that moment my poor father, heart-broken, grew careless of the future, and it was only for my sake that he endeavoured to elude the bloodhounds of the Tzar."