ou will drive the
demon of poverty from my head; I will repay you--I will guard yours from
the demons of disgrace and shame; you shall have no cause to blush in the
presence of the man whom you love. On the day that I bring from the
emperor half a million as my property and yours, your past and mine will
both be effaced, and we will enter upon a new life, in a new world! Let the
spy, Schulmeister, the adventuress Leonore de Simonie; be buried, and new
people, new names, rise from the budding seeds of the half million. But now
farewell, my daughter, my beautiful Leonie. I must begin the work, must
summon all my assistants and subordinates, and assign their tasks, for the
next few days will bring much work. It is not enough for me to inform the
emperor of the existence of a conspiracy, and the plan of the accomplices,
but I must be able to give him convincing and irrefutable proofs of this
plot, that he may not deem it a mere invention which I have devised in
order to be able to claim a large reward. No, the emperor must see that I
am telling him the truth, so I must not let the affair explode too soon. I
must first know the names and residences of all the conspirators,
investigate the details of the whole enterprise, and hold in my hand the
threads of the entire web in order to be sure that all the spiders who have
labored at it will be caught in their own net."

"Do so, father," cried Leonore joyously. "I will leave them all to you--all
these poor spiders of the conspiracy. I feel no pity for them. Let them
die, let them suffer, what do I care! I, too, have suffered, oh, and what
mortal anguish! Yes, let them die and rot; I shall at last be happy, free,
and beloved. Oh, God be praised that the man whom I love is not entangled
in this conspiracy, that I could disclose the whole plot, mention the
names of all the conspirators, without fear of compromising him. Yes, I
thank Thee, my God, that Kolbielsky has no share in this scheme."

CHAPTER VII.

THE REVELATION.

The fatal Thursday had passed, Wednesday had come, yet Leonore had received
no tidings from her father. For three days she had not seen him, had had no
message from him.

But it was not this alone that disturbed and tortured Leonore. She had also
had no news from Kolbielsky, though the week which he had named as the
necessary duration of their parting had expired the day before. He had
said:

"My week of exile will begin from this hour, and the firs