of private vengeance. If monsieur would make
a powerful friend he should seek the Lady Muriel
Carey.
“Monsieur will be so good as
to destroy this when read. My will
is in my trunk.
“Your Grace’s
faithful servant,
“Jules
Duson.”
Mr. Sabin read this letter carefully through to the
end. Then he put it into his pocket-book and
quickly rang the bell.
“You had better send for a doctor at once,”
he said to the waiter who appeared. “My
servant appears to have suffered from some sudden
illness. I am afraid that he is quite dead.”
“You spoke, my dear Lucille,” the Duchess
of Dorset said, “of your departure. Is
not that a little premature?”
Lucille shrugged her beautiful shoulders, and leaned
back in her corner of the couch with half-closed eyes.
The Duchess, who was very Anglo-Saxon, was an easy
person to read, and Lucille was anxious to know her
fate.
“Why premature?” she asked. “I
was sent for to use my influence with Reginald Brott.
Well, I did my best, and I believe that for days
it was just a chance whether I did not succeed.
However, as it happened, I failed. One of his
friends came and pulled him away just as he was wavering.
He has declared himself now once and for all.
After his speech at Glasgow he cannot draw back.
I was brought all the way from America, and I want
to go back to my husband.”
The Duchess pursed her lips.
“When one has the honour, my dear,” she
said, “of belonging to so wonderful an organisation
as this we must not consider too closely the selfish
claims of family. I am sure that years ago I
should have laughed at any one who had told me that
I, Georgina Croxton, should ever belong to such a
thing as a secret society, even though it had some
connection with so harmless and excellent an organisation
as the Primrose League.”
“It does seem remarkable,” Lucille murmured.
“But look what terrible times have come upon
us,” the Duchess continued, without heeding
the interruption. “When I was a girl a
Radical was a person absolutely without consideration.
Now all our great cities are hot-beds of Socialism
and—and anarchism. The whole country
seems banded together against the aristocracy and the
landowners. Combination amongst us became absolutely
necessary in some shape or form. When the Prince
came and began to drop hints about the way the spread
of Socialism had been checked in Hungary and Austria,
and even Germany, I was interested from the first.
And when he went further, and spoke of the Society,
it was I who persuaded Dorset to join. Dear
man, he is very earnest, but very slow, and very averse
to anything at all secretive. I am sure the
reflection that he is a member of a secret society,
even although it is simply a linking together of the
aristocracy of Europe in their own defence, has kept
him awake for many a night.”
