nly springs up before me."

"Dead? He was too young to make that a probability. Gone to ruin? That
is indeed possible, judging from his life lately."

"What do you mean?" asked his sister excitedly. "What do you know of
his life?"

"I know something of it. Falkenried is too dear to me to make me lose
sight altogether of his son. I have never mentioned what I knew to
either of you. But as soon as I returned to my post, ten years ago, I
used my diplomatic position to ascertain what I could concerning them."

"And what did you learn?"

"At first, only what we already knew, that Zalika had taken her son to
Roumania. You knew that her step-father, our cousin Wallmoden, had died
some time before, and after her divorce from Falkenried she always lived
with her mother. From that time we heard nothing of her until she came
to Germany to capture her son, but just before she came, as I learned,
she inherited a large fortune by the death of her brother."

"Her brother? I never knew she had one."

"Yes, he was ten years her senior, and on attaining his majority had
become master of a large estate. His mother's second marriage was
childless and he never married. When he met with a sudden death while
hunting, Zalika, being next of kin, fell heir to his large possessions.
As soon as she entered into possession, she began at once to plan how
she could get her son. You know that part of the story. Then they passed
a few years in a wild, erratic life upon her Roumania estate, and they
fairly flung money away in their extravagance. After that they became
bankrupt, and mother and son went out into the world like gypsies."

Wallmoden told all this in the same cold, contemptuous tone as that in
which he had spoken to Hartmut and in Regine's face, too, was a look of
abhorrence for the wife and mother who had fulfilled so ill the duties
of her station. But she could not restrain the anxiety she felt for the
son, as she asked:

"And since then? Have you heard nothing further?"

"Yes, on several occasions. Once when I was with the embassy at
Florence, I heard her name mentioned incidentally. She was at Rome; then
a year after that she was back in Paris again; and sometime later I
heard that Frau Zalika Rojanow was dead."

"So she is dead," said Regine, softly. "How did they live all these
years?"

Wallmoden shrugged his shoulders. "How do all adventurers live? Perhaps
they had saved something from the shipwreck, perhaps they hadn't.