Part 30 (1/2)

A BYGONE TRAGEDY

He sat so long silent after that outburst that I feared heto tell er to hear

”Did she--the Countess Anna--die here, sir?” I asked at last

He roused hi your pardon; I had aletically ”Die here? No; better, far better for her if she had!

Still, she was not happy here The old people did not like her; did not try to like her; though I don't kno they could have held out against her, for she did her best to conciliate them, to confor to church with them

She was a devout Roman Catholic, and she explained to entry held to their religious vieas one ainst them in the eyes of the Russian bureaucracy and episcopacy I don't think Mrs Pendennis--Anthony's ave me for the view I took of this matter; she threatened to write to the bishop She was a masterful old lady--and I believe she would have done it, too, if Anthony and his wife had rehborhood But the friction becaain; never again!

”They went to London for a time; and from there they both wrote to o and stay with them, but I never went Then--it was in the autumn of '83--they returned to Russia, and the letters were less frequent They were nearly always froood correspondent! I do not know even nohether he wrote to his parents, or they to him

”I had had no news from Russia for somefor a long tiraphed for and ca his stay, a few days only, during which he had to get through a great amount of business; but I learned that his as in a delicate state of health, and he was desperately anxious about her I fear he got very little syhter-in-law had increased, if that were possible, during their separation Poor woht its own punishain She only heard from him once,--about a month after he left, to return to Russia; and then he wrote briefly, brutally in a way, though I knoas half h not in childbirth If I had been with her, I could have saved her,' he wrote 'You wished her dead, and now your wish is granted; but I also aland; I shall never bring my child home to the house where her mother was an alien'

”He has kept his word, as you know He did not write to me at all; and it was years before I heard what had happened during his absence, and on his return When he reached the frontier he was arrested and detained in prison for several days Then, on consideration of the fact that he was a British subject--”

”That doesn't weigh for much in Russia to-day,” I interpolated

”It did then He was informed that his wife had been arrested as an accomplice in a Nihilist plot; that she had been condemned to transportation to Siberia, but had died before the sentence could be executed Also that her infant, born a few days before her arrest, had been deported, with its nurse, and was probably awaiting hi Finally he hiain, and expelled from 'Holy Russia' The one bit of comfort was the child, whom he found safe and sound under the care of the nurse, a Ger, and who confirmed the terrible story

”I heard all this about ten years ago,” Treherne continued, ”when by the purest chance I met Pendennis in Switzerland I eather-bound by a pre my fellow sufferers at the little hostelry were Anthony and his daughter”

”Anne herself! What was she like?” I asked eagerly

”A beautiful girl,--the ie of her dead mother,” he answered slowly

”Or what her e She was then about--let me see--twelve or thirteen, but she seemed older; not e call a precocious child, but womanly beyond her years, and devoted to her father, as he to her I took hiland,--to his own hohter's sake But he would not listen to ht up as a citizeness of the world,' he declared

'She shall never be subjected to the liland'

”I ether!” he added with a sigh

”Well, that is all I have to tell you, Mr Wynn Froht of Anthony Pendennis and his daughter; but I fear there is no doubt that he has allowed her--possibly even encouraged her--to become involved with soood, but incalculable harm Perhaps heher mother; and now she has shared her mother's fate!”

”I will not believe that till I have proof positive,” I said slowly

”But how can you get such proof?” he asked

”I don't know yet; but I' to seek it--to seek her!”