"Having left directions on a paper which you could see within the safe when you opened it, I carefully locked it and hid my own key under a special place in the carpet.
"I intended then to write to you at once and tell you to come and open the safe, whatever might happen to me, for I believed that its hiding-place would not easily be discovered, but I never had this chance.
"Exhausted with want of sleep, I went back to my room and threw myself on my bed, half dressed as I was, with my white silk dressing-robe on in which I had sat writing half the night.
"I at once fell asleep and must have slept for hours, for it was dark again when I awoke, and then I was called back to consciousness by having my arm roughly shaken. I found the Duke Waldemar and two other men in my room.
"He at once demanded to know the whereabouts of the steel safe with the diamonds, and held a naked knife to my throat to force me to tell him.
"Life was of very little value to me in comparison with the needs of the poor for whom I was determined to preserve the riches.
"Each time I refused to tell him he pressed the knife closer to my throat, until it cut into the flesh, and I felt the warm blood trickling down on to my white dressing-robe.
"When he and his companions had been there it seemed to me a long, long time, and it was useless for me to shriek for help, I gave myself up for lost, turning my thoughts as well as I could to the next world.
"It was then that the Duke and his men were startled by hearing you open the front door of the house and stumble through the dark pa.s.sage.
"With horrible curses they fled through the window.
"Then you came, and I had just the strength left to whisper to you to open the safe when I fainted away.
"I have no recollection of what occurred after. Many hours must have elapsed before I regained consciousness, and then I came to myself in an underground room of what I knew after to be a lonely tower on the hills near Bath."
"What, not Cruft"s Folly?" I suggested.
"Yes," she replied thoughtfully; "I believe that was the name I afterwards learned was given to the place.
"I was waited on by a German woman, the wife of one of the Duke"s followers, a big dark man with a black beard.
"My dress, my bed, and general surroundings were those of a poor country woman.
"But this black-bearded German and his wife were the means of saving me.
"There had been an accident, a man had fallen off the tower and been killed.
"The big dark man and his wife were terribly frightened, and in this state could not withstand the temptation of the big bribe I promised them if they would obtain my release.
"They brought a country cart to the tower, full of straw, as soon as it was dusk on the day of the accident, and in this I was driven to Devizes. From there I telegraphed to my bankers and they sent a special messenger to me with an abundance of money and a new cheque-book; from that time forth I was my own mistress again.
"The wound in my neck, which was only skin deep, had been carefully bandaged by the German woman; under the hands of a skilled doctor and nurse, it soon healed.
"I have very little doubt but that the Duke intended to keep me a prisoner in the tower until I disclosed the whereabouts of the diamonds.
"The big German who had arranged my escape--and to whom I gave five hundred pounds--told me that a grave had already been dug to receive my body in the old graveyard behind the house in Monmouth Street.
"Had the Duke discovered the diamonds, I should have been murdered to save further trouble from me; he knew, of course, I was already dead to the world. As it was, they only buried my bloodstained bed-linen in the grave when they carried me off from the house, after you had left the Duke stunned."
I could have told the old Queen that the big German did not long enjoy her five hundred pounds, but that he himself filled the grave intended for her, and which, probably, he had helped to dig. I did not tell her this, she had had trouble enough; but I had little doubt that the Duke had discovered that the man had played him false, and had shot him and disposed of his body in that way.
Queen Inez paused, and pa.s.sed her frail white hand across her eyes.
"I have told you all now, I think," she said slowly, for she was fatigued. "When I was well enough I came here and found a telegram from Don Juan. I knew you had delivered the casket. Here I have remained; here I shall, if it be G.o.d"s will, remain to the end."
Seeing that the long relation had tired her, I leant forward and filled one of the little liqueur gla.s.ses with the golden Chartreuse and handed it to her. She took it from me with a smile, and insisted that we should take some too. We sat sipping the delicious liqueur in silence, our gaze fixed on the blue lake and the white sails slowly moving in the stillness of the afternoon heat.
As I saw the colour returning to the Queen"s face, I ventured to ask her another question.
"There is one person, madame," I said, "who"s history you have not yet thought fit to tell us. Forgive me if I am presumptuous in asking the question. It is your son I speak of."
A very sweet smile came over her face as I ceased speaking. She glanced, it appeared involuntarily, at the sparkling liqueur in her little gla.s.s.
"My dear son"s history is soon told," she said, still smiling. "He has been a Carthusian monk, a Trappist, since his youth. He never had the least inclination for the life of the world. He is the abbot of the monastery of San Juan del Monte, near Valoro."
_Then_ I recollected his fair face, and blue eyes, and remembered that he had reminded me of _some one_; now I knew who that some one was--his mother. It was plain to me why Don Juan had taken us there.
"Every year," continued Queen Inez, "by the special permission of the head of his order, he comes to me and stays ten days. Those are, to me, ten days stolen from heaven. Thank G.o.d, he comes next month, and each time he comes," she added, with a smile, raising her little gla.s.s, "he brings me a present from his monastery of the veritable Chartreuse."
We lingered with the dear old Queen until the sun was declining over the lake, whose waters were turning a darker blue; the sister came with wraps and a warning glance to take her to her rooms in the convent.
At her request, during our short stay at Lucerne, we visited her again and again, until the day of parting came, and we bade her farewell on the terrace where we had first met her, above the blue waters of the lake.
There were tears in her eyes and ours when we left her, and the tears came back again to ours as we looked wistfully up at the terrace as Fritz rowed us away, and we saw her waving to us no longer.
That was the last we saw of her, or shall ever see in this world, for six months after we received a letter from the Reverend Mother telling us that "Madame la Comtesse" was dead, and Dolores and I, remembering her sufferings, her patience, and her great love, are presumptuous enough to think that heaven has gained another saint.
No, neither Ethel nor St. Nivel are married yet, but I would not say that they never will be. I have heard rumours of a Guardsman on the one hand, and a sweet Irish girl on the other.
At any rate, during those happy autumn weeks which Dolores and I invariably spend at dear old Bannington in the shooting season, if, by any chance, Ethel and I meet in the gloaming in the long, oak-panelled corridors, we indulge in no more cousinly kisses; she _won"t_.