he maddened tyrant discovered
Pierre Troubetskoi's long-belated letter, returned once more to madden
her. Fraser had simply raged in a demoniac passion.

For the mistake of a life was at last revealed when that one letter
came! The letter addressed to the wife as Valerie Delavigne, which had
followed them slowly upon their travels, and, by a devil's decree, had
fallen, by a spy-servant's trick, into Hugh Fraser's hands. It mattered
not that the coming lover was even yet ignorant of the miserable
marriage. The envelope, with its address, was missing, when the long
pages of burning tenderness were read by the infuriated husband. "I have
been buried a year in the snows of Siberia," wrote Pierre, "upon the
secret service of the Czar. I was ill of a fever for long months upon my
return, and now I am coming to take you to my heart, never to be parted
any more." The address of his banker in Paris, all the plans for
their voyage to Russia, even the tender messages to the sister of his
love--all these were the last goad to a maddened man, whose raging
invective and brutal violence drove a weeping woman out into the
cheerless night. He deemed her the Russian's cherished mistress. With a
shudder Alixe Delavigne recalled the white face of the discarded mother,
whose babe slumbered in peace, while the half-demented woman fled away
to the shelter of the house of an old French nurse.

The morrow, when Hugh Fraser bade her also leave his house forever, was
pictured again in her mind, and the insolent gift of the hundred-pound
note, with the words, "Go and find your sister! Never darken my door
again!" She had taken that money and used it to save her sister's life.

The darkened sick-chamber, the flight across the channel, and the rugged
path which led Valerie, at last, to die in peace in Pierre Troubetskoi's
arms--all this returned to the resolute avenger of a sister who had
died, dreaming of the little childish face hidden from her forever, "He
shall pay the price of his safety to the uttermost farthing, to the last
little humiliation," she cried, starting up as Alan Hawke stood before
her, for the hour of ten had stolen upon her. "Nadine shall love her
mother, and that love shall bridge the silent gulf of Death!"

"You have been agitated?" he gently said, for there were tell-tale tears
upon her lashes. "Tell me, is it victory or defeat?"

"I shall see my sister's child, to-morrow," the Lady of Jitomir bravely
said. "And he--the m