Olga."—I saw she was very pale.

"I am afraid of that man," she answered. "He is a man of good family and great wealth, and has a lot of influence in certain circles. He is an ugly enemy."

"Ugly, he certainly is," said I, lightly, speaking of his face.

"I mean dangerous," replied the girl seriously.

"I know you do, child," I answered, as naturally as if she were really my sister. "But we'll wait till we talk this over after to-morrow morning. I tell you what I'll promise you as a treat. You shall breakfast with me, or rather I'll breakfast with you to-morrow, and tell you at first hand all about the meeting. You have been a little too anxious about me."

"I am afraid that might occasion remark," she replied with the demure look I had noticed once or twice before. "You know that you have not always been an attentive brother, Alexis: and it is not good acting to overdo the part:" and she threw me a little smile and a glance.

I laughed and answered:—"That may be: but I've changed since the morning, as I told you before."

"Very well, then. You remember of course that aunt never gets up early enough to have breakfast with me—but you shall come if"—and here the light died right out of her face and her underlip trembled so that she had to bite it to keep it steady—"if all goes well, as I pray it may."

"You are a good sister, and need have no fear. I am not made of the stuff to go down before that bully's sword. So get ready my favourite dish—whatever that may be—and I'll promise to do justice to it."

"Here are your rooms," she said, a moment later, as she stopped before a large wide house. "They are on the ground floor with those windows. But before we go in, remember your manservant's name is Vosk, and he is a very sharp fellow. And please let me give you a word of warning. Alexis has not only not been attentive to me, but his manner has often been very brusque and—oh, if you had had sisters you would know how brothers behave. They don't mind turning their backs on one; they contradict, and interrupt and laugh at one; treat one as a convenience, and are rude. They don't in the least mind hiding their affection under the garb of indifference and contempt, and all that."

"Am I to treat you with contempt, then?" I asked with a grin.

"I think you should be a little more brusque," she replied, laughing and blushing. She was really a very jolly little sister.

"I shall get into it all in a day or two, perhaps."

"You had better try. Vosk is very sharp indeed."

"All right, I'll find means somehow to dull his wits."

We went in and I then tried to put a little more bluntness into my manner and to play the brother.

The man was in his room when I entered and started when he saw the change in my appearance. I caught his vigilant eye glance sharply at the pattern and cut of my clothes.

"Does your face hurt you now, Alexis?" asked Olga.

I understood her and answered in a somewhat surly tone, putting my hand to my left cheek. "No, not so much now; but it was an infernally silly joke to play. It's cost me my beard and a suit of clothes. A good thing it wasn't a uniform. Put out something for me to wear, Vosk," I said sharply to the man.

He looked at me again very keenly, but went at once to do what I ordered. Olga and I went into the chief sitting room—there were two leading one out of the other—and sat down. The man's manner had reminded me of several things. Very soon I made an excuse and sent him out.

"You must tell me all about the clothes I have to wear at different functions," I said. "Vosk saw that these were not out of my wardrobe proper, and while he's out, I'll hurry and change them, and we'll see how the uniforms fit me. A mistake may spoil everything at the last moment."

I ran into the bedroom and slipped into the undress uniform the man had laid ready. To my supreme satisfaction I found that they fitted me fairly well; and though they required some touches here and there, they would pass muster as my own. I tried on also some of the other uniforms I saw in the room; and wearing one of them, I went back to my "sister."

She cried out in her astonishment:—"My brother Alexis to the life."

"Your brother Alexis to the death," I answered so earnestly that she coloured as I took her hand and kissed it. Then in a lighter tone I added, "Uniforms make all men of anything like the same figure look alike. It's fortunate that your brother's an army man." Then we chatted for some minutes until I thought it prudent to change back again into the undress uniform that Vosk had put out.

Then I took a lesson in uniforms and questioned Olga until she had told me all that she herself knew about them.

CHAPTER III.

MY SECONDS.

I walked with my sister to her home, and then returned to my rooms and sat down to think out seriously and in detail the extraordinary position into which I had fallen.

The more I considered it the more I liked it, and I am bound to add the more dangerous it seemed. Obviously it was one thing to be mistaken for a man and to pass for him for a few minutes or hours: but it was quite another to take up his life where he had dropped it and play the part day by day and week after week. There must be a thousand threads of the existence of which no one but himself could know, yet each would have to be laid correctly in continuation of the due pattern of his life; or discovery would follow.

Here lay my difficulty, and for a time I did not see a way round it or through it or under it. So far as I could judge by all that my sister had told me, the resemblance between the real Alexis and myself was strictly limited to physical qualities. A freak of nature had made us counterparts of one another in size, look, complexion, voice, and certain gestures. But it stopped there. My other self was a subtle, cunning, intriguing, traitorous conspirator, and very much of a coward: while I—well, I was not that.

I come of a very old Cornish family with many of the Celtic characteristics most strongly developed. I believe that I have a certain amount of mother wit or shrewdness, but no process that was ever known or tried with me was sufficient to drive into me even sufficient learning to enable me to scrape through a career. I was the despair first of the Russian schoolmasters for over ten years, and next of all the English tutors who took me in hand during the next ten. I went to a large English school, and was expelled, after a hundred scrapes, because I learnt nothing. I tried to cram for Oxford, but never could get through Smalls; and the good old Master, who loved a strong man, almost cried when, after two years of ploughs, he had to send me down, when I was the best oar in the eight, the smartest field and hardest hitter in the eleven, the fastest mile and half-mile in the Varsity, and one of the three strongest men in all Oxford.

But I had to go, and I went to an army crammer to try and be stuffed for the service. I never had a chance with the books; but I carried all before me in every possible form of sport. It was there I picked up my fencing and revolver shooting. It became a sort of passion with me. I could use the revolver like a trickster and shoot to a hair's breadth; while with either broadsword or rapier I could beat the fencing master all over the school. However, I was beaten by the examiners and my couple of years' work succeeded only in giving my muscles the hardness of steel and flexibility of whipcord. I am not a big man, nearly two inches under 6ft, but at that time I had never met anyone who could beat me in any trial where strength, endurance, or agility was needed. But these would not satisfy the examiners, so I gave up all thought of getting into the army that way.

I tried the ranks, therefore, and joined a regiment in which a couple of brainless family men had enlisted, as a step toward a commission.