mouth—full-lipped and sensuous, almost sensular, in fact; and yet it was small enough, and the lips were so daintily shaped that it added to, rather than detracted from her beauty.

They were lips whose kisses had lured more than one bearer of a well-known name to destruction. Some they had sent to the scaffold, and others were still dreaming of their fatal sweetness in prison or in hopeless exile; for Sophie Valdemar, daughter of Count Leo Valdemar, Chief of the Third Section of the Ministry of the Interior, had been trained up from girlhood by her father in every art of intrigue, until even he was fully justified in calling her the most skilful diplomatic detective in Europe.

To her friends and acquaintances she was just a charming and brilliantly-accomplished girl of nineteen, who had reigned as undisputed Queen of Beauty in Moscow and Petersburg until Adelaide de Condé had come from Vienna with her father, and, by some mysterious means, unknown even to her, had been received into instant favour at Court, and in the most exclusive circles in the most exclusive city in the world. In fact, the enigma which it was the present object of her life to solve was how this could be possible—granted the tacit alliance between the Russian Empire and the French Republic, and the Prince's openly expressed contempt for all modern things French and Republican. There were, indeed, only three people in Europe who could have solved that riddle, and she was not one of them.

As she entered she saw Victor coming towards her. Instantly her eyes brightened, and the faintest of flushes showed through the pallor of her silken skin. He stopped for a moment to greet them, but his clasp on her hand was nothing more than the formal pressure which friendship expects, and she looked in vain for any gleam in his eyes answering that in her own.

When he had passed in towards the door she flung a swift glance round the room, and as the soft pansy eyes rested on the exquisite shape and lovely face of Adelaide de Condé they seemed to harden and blacken for just the fraction of a second. The next moment she and her father were greeting the Prince and the Marquise with a cordiality that was only tempered by the almost indefinable reserve which the place and the situation made indispensable.

"My dear Marquise," she said, in that soft, pure French which, outside France, is only heard in Russia, "if possible, you have excelled yourself to-night; you are a perfect vision——"

"My dear Sophie," laughed the Marquise, "what is the matter? You seem as formal as you wish to be flattering; but really, if it is a matter of compliments, it is not you, but I who should be paying them."

"Quite a waste of time, my dear children," laughed the Count, gruffly. "Imagine you two paying each other compliments when there are a couple of hundred men here with thousands of them crowding up to their lips. Still, Prince," he went on, "it is better so than rivalry, for rival beauty has always worked more harm in the world than rival ambitions."

"There can be no question of rivalry, my dear Count," replied the Prince. "Why should the Evening envy the Morning, or the Lily be jealous of the Rose?"

"Put like a Frenchman and a statesman, Prince: that was said as only one of the old regime could say it," said Sophie, with a little backward movement of her head. "How is it that the men of this generation never say things like that—or, if they try to, bungle over it."

"Perhaps they are too busy to revive the lost art of politeness," laughed Adelaide. "But come, papa; they are playing a lovely waltz, and I am dying for a dance, and so is Sophie, I daresay."

"And, by their looks, many of these young men are dying of the same complaint; so suppose we go into the salon," said the Prince, offering his arm to Sophie.

It was nearly half-an-hour before Victor found Adelaide disengaged in the ball-room. The first waltz that she had saved for him was just beginning, and, as he slipped his arm round her waist, he whispered under cover of the music:

"If you please, we will just take a couple of turns, and then you will give me a few precious minutes of your company in the winter garden."

She glanced up swiftly at him with a look of keen inquiry, and whispered in reply:

"Of course, my Victor, if you wish it; especially as it is getting a little warm here—and no doubt you have something more interesting for me than dancing."

"I think you will find it so," he said, as they glided away into the shining, smoothly-swirling throng which filled the great salon.

After two or three turns they stopped at the curtained entrance of the vast conservatory, whose tropical trees and flowers and warm scented air formed a delicious contrast to the cold, black, Russian winter's night. Almost at the same moment Sophie Valdemar said to her partner, a smart young officer of the Imperial Guard:

"I think that will do for the present, if you don't mind; I don't feel very vigorous to-night, somehow: suppose you find me a seat in the garden, and then go and tell one of the men to bring me an ice."

They stopped just as Victor and Adelaide passed through the curtains. They followed a couple of yards behind them, and Sophie quickened her step a little, her teeth came together with a little snap, and her eyes darkened again as she saw Adelaide look up at her companion and heard her say softly:

"Well, what is your news—for I am sure you have some?"

"Yes, I have," he replied; "and the greatest of good news; you know from whom?"

"Ah," said Adelaide, with a little catch in her voice, "from him; and has he——"

"Succeeded? Yes; and to the fullest of his expectations. He goes to Paris to-morrow, and then——"

The rest of the sentence was lost to Sophie as they turned away into the garden.

Her companion found her a seat under a tree-fern, and left her leaning back in her long-cushioned chair of Russian wicker, looking across the winter garden, through the palms and ferns, at Victor and Adelaide, as they moved along, obviously looking for a secluded corner. During those few moments her whole nature had, for the time being, completely changed. The jealous, passionate woman had vanished, and in her place remained the cold, clear-headed, highly-trained intriguer, with incarnate and unemotional intellect, thinking swiftly and logically, trying to find some meaning in the words that she had just heard, words which, if she had only known their import, she would have found pregnant with the fate of Europe.

"I wonder who has succeeded beyond his best expectations? Someone closely connected with both of them, of course! And Paris—why should his success take him to Paris? Victor Fargeau, Alsatian though he is, is one of the most brilliant of the younger generation of German officers, a favourite of the Emperor, a member of the Staff, and attaché here in Petersburg. And she, my dear friend and enemy, is a Bourbon, an aristocrat of the first water, the daughter of an open enemy of our very good and convenient ally the French Republic. Paris—he who has succeeded is going to Paris. Well, I would give a good deal to know who he is and why he is going to Paris."

CHAPTER II

"And so, Monsieur le Ministre, I am to take that as your final word? I have given you every proof that I can—saving the impossible—the bringing of my apparatus from Strassburg to Paris, which, of course, you know is an impossibility, since it would have to cross the frontier, which was once a French high road. I have shown you the facts, the figures, the drawings—everything. Can you not see that I am honest, that I love my country, from which I have been torn away—I who come from a family that has lived in Alsace since it was first French territory—I who am a Frenchman through five generations—I who have sold my son to the Prussians—I who have masqueraded for years in the Prussian University of Strassburg, once the Queen of the Rhine Province—I who have