Her Majesty's Minister

“I must suffer alone,” she responded gloomily, shaking her head. Her countenance was as pale as her gown, and she shivered as though she were cold, although the noonday heat was suffocating.

“Because you refuse to tell me anything or allow me to assist you?” I said. “This is not in accordance with the promise made and sealed by your lips on that evening long ago.”

“Nor have your actions been in accordance with your own promise,” she said slowly and distinctly.

“To what do you refer?”

“You told me that you loved me, Gerald,” she said in a deep voice, suddenly grown calm. “You swore by all you held most sacred that I was all the world to you, and that no one should come between us. Yet past events have shown that you have forgotten those words of yours on the day when we idled in the Bois beneath the trees. You, too, remember that day, do you not – the day when our lips met for the first time, and we both believed our path would in future be strewn with flowers? Ah!” she sighed, “and what an awakening life has been to me since then!”

“We parted because of your refusal to satisfy me as to the real state of your feelings towards the man who was my enemy,” I said rather warmly.

“But was it justifiable?” she asked in a tone of deep reproach and mingled sweetness. Her blue eyes looked full upon me – those eyes that had held me in such fascination in the golden days of youth. “Has any single fact which you have since discovered verified your suspicions? Tell me truthfully;” and she leaned towards me in an attitude of deepest earnestness.

“No,” I answered honestly, “I cannot say that my suspicions have ever been verified.”

“And because of that you have returned to me when it is too late.”

“Too late!” I cried. “What do you mean?”

“Exactly what I have said. You have come back to me when it is too late.”

“You speak in enigmas, Yolande. Why not be more explicit?”

Her pale lips trembled, her eyes were brimming with tears, her chilly hand quivered in mine. She did not speak for some moments, but at last said in a low, tremulous voice half choked by emotion:

“Once you loved me, Gerald, – of that I feel confident; and I reciprocated your affection, God knows! Our love was, perhaps, curious, inasmuch as you were English and I was of a different creed and held different ideas from those which you considered right. It is always the same with a man and woman of different nationality – there must be a give-and-take principle between them. Between us, however, there was perfect confidence until, by a strange combination of circumstances – by a stroke of the sword of Fate – that incident occurred which led to our estrangement.”

She paused, her blanched lips shut tight. “Well?” I asked, “I am all attention. Why is it too late now for me to make reparation for the past?”

I loved her with all my soul. I was heedless of those words of the old Baronne, of Anderson’s suspicions, and Kaye’s denunciation. Even if she were a spy, I adored her. The fire of that old love had swept upon me, and I could not hold back, even though her touch might be as that of a leper and her lips venomous.

“Reparation is impossible,” she answered hoarsely. “Is not that sufficient?”

“No, it is not sufficient,” I answered clearly. “I will not be put off by such an answer.”

“It were better,” she cried – “better that I had died yesterday than suffer like this. You rescued me from death only to torture me.”

Her words aroused within me a distinct suspicion that her strange illness had been brought to pass because, using some mysterious means, she had made an attempt against her own life. I believed that she had suffered, and was still suffering, from the effects of some poison, the exact nature of which neither Deane nor Trépard could as yet determine.

“I do not seek to torture you, dearest,” I protested. “Far from it. I merely want to know the truth, in order that I may share your unhappiness, as your betrothed ought to do.”

“But you are not my betrothed.”

“I was once.”

“But not now. You taunt me with breaking that promise which I made three years ago, yet you yourself it was who played me false – who left me for your prim, strait-laced English miss!”

In an instant the truth was plain. She was aware that I had transferred my affections to Edith! Someone had told her – no doubt with a good many embellishments, or perhaps some scandalous story. In the salons through which we of the diplomatic circle are compelled to move, women’s tongues are ever at work match-making and mischief-making. On the Continent love and politics run always hand-in-hand. That is the reason why the most notorious of the demi-monde in Paris, in Vienna, and in Berlin are the secret agents of their respective Governments; and many are the honest men innocently denounced through jealousy and kindred causes. A false declaration of one or other of these unscrupulous spies has before now caused the downfall of a Ministry or the disgrace of a noble and patriotic politician.

“I know to whom you refer,” I said, with bowed head, after a moment’s pause. “It is currently reported that I love her. I have loved her. I do not seek to deny it. When a man sustains such a blow as I sustained before we parted, he often rushes to another woman for consolation. The influence of that second woman often prevents him from going to the bad altogether. It has been so in my case.”

“And you love her now?” she cried, the fire of fierce jealousy in her eyes. “You cannot deny it!”

“I do deny it,” I cried. “True, until yesterday I held her in esteem, even in affection; but it is not so now. All my love for you, Yolande, has returned to me. Our parting has rendered you dearer and sweeter to me than ever.”

“I cannot believe it,” she exclaimed falteringly.

“I swear that it is so. In all my life, although am compelled to treat women with courtesy and sometimes to affect flirtation, because of my profession as a diplomatist, I have loved only one woman – yourself;” and I raised her chilly hand to my lips, kissing it fervently.

Mine was no mere caprice at that moment. With an all-consuming passion I loved her, and was prepared on her account to make any sacrifice she demanded. Let the reader remember what had already been told me, and reflect that, like many another man, I loved madly, and was heedless of any consequences that might follow. In this particular I was not alone. Thousands before me had been allured to their ruin by a woman’s eyes, just as thousands of brave women’s hearts have been broken and their lives wrecked by men’s false oaths of fidelity. I have heard wiseacres say that the woman only suffers in such cases; the man never. Whether that rule proves always true will be shown in this strange story of my own love.

She drew her hand away slowly, but forcibly, saying:

“You cannot love two women. Already you have shown a preference for a wife of your own people.”

“It is all over between us,” I protested. “Mine was a mere passing fancy, engendered, I think, by the loneliness I suffered when I lost you.”

“Ah,” (she smiled sadly), “that is all very well! A woman, when once played false by the man she loves and trusts, is never the same —never!”

“Then am I to understand, Yolande, that you refuse to pardon me, or to accept my affection?”

“I have already pardoned you,” she faltered; “but to accept the love you once withdrew from me without just reason is, I regret to say, impossible.”

“You speak coldly, as though you were refusing a mere invitation to dinner, or something of no greater importance,” I protested. “I offer you my whole heart, my love – nay, my life;” and I held her hand again, looking straight into those wonderful eyes, now so calm, so serious, that my gaze wavered before them.

Slowly she shook her head, and her trembling breast rose and fell again.

“Ours was a foolish infatuation,” she answered with an effort. “It is best that we should both of us forget.”

“Forget!” I cried. “But I can never forget you, Yolande. You are my love. You are all the world to me.”

Her eyes were grave, and I saw that tears stood in them.

“No,” she protested quietly; “do not say that. I cannot be any more to you than other women whom you meet daily. Besides, I know well that in the diplomatic service marriage is a serious drawback to any save an ambassador.”

“When a man is in love as I am with you, dearest, he throws all thoughts of his career to the winds; personal interests are naught where true love is concerned.”

“You must not – nay, you shall not – wreck your future on my account,” she declared in a low, intense voice. “It is not just either to yourself or to the Englishwoman who loves you.”

“Why do you taunt me with that, Yolande?” I asked reproachfully. “I do not love her. I have never truly loved her. I was lonely after you had gone out of my life, and she was amusing, – that was all.”

“And now you find me equally amusing – eh?” she remarked, with just a touch of bitter sarcasm.

“Why should you be jealous of her?” I asked. “You might just as well be jealous of Sibyl, Lord Barmouth’s daughter.”

“With the latter you are certainly on terms of most intimate friendship,” she answered with a smile. “I really wonder that I did not object to her in the days long ago.”

“Ah!” I laughed, “you certainly had no cause. It is true that we have been good friends ever since the day when she arrived home from the convent-school at Bruges, a prim young miss with her hair tied up with ribbon. Thrown constantly together, as we were, I became her male confidant and intimate friend; hence my licence to give her counsel in many matters and sometimes to criticise those actions of which I don’t approve.”