rgain with me, offering to keep
silence for a certain sum. Finally he laid claim to the diamonds in
the steel safe, which he stated were his father's property. My answer
to his requests and fraudulent claims was to have him placed on board a
steamer bound for Europe.

"Then he threatened me with his life-long vengeance. Leagued with a
professional agitator named Razzaro, he commenced to undermine my
authority with great subtilty, till in the end my simple people who
once had loved me and my family grew to hate me, and to look upon
Waldemar, even the Royalists, as a much-wronged person.

"You know the rest; it is written in the history of the world. My
people rose in rebellion. I was dethroned, and with one single
faithful companion, the Baroness d'Altenstein, fled to Europe in the
warship of a friendly nation.

"But before the storm burst I had sent to Europe the steel safe and its
precious contents, the diamonds.

"For some reasons, I have many times since wished that it had sunk to
the bottom of the Atlantic.

"For years I lived in one of the fairest cities of Europe with my
faithful d'Altenstein, and for those years the Duke Waldemar left me
in peace, being, I suppose, occupied in some other villainy.

"But suddenly he commenced his importunities again, and made one
dastardly attempt, through others, to steal the safe from the bankers'
vaults in which it lay, but this was frustrated.

"Harried to death by his persecution, I consulted a learned English
judge whom I met in Society in Paris, Sir Henry Anstruther, your
father," she added, turning to me, "and it has always seemed to me a
providential coincidence that in my need I should also have turned to
you.

"I asked this good English judge, without disclosing my secret, what he
considered the most effectual mode for a woman to adopt to hide herself
entirely from the world and her friends. I said I was very curious to
know what his long experience had taught him in that respect.

"He seemed amused at my question, and thought for some time before
replying, little guessing what was running in my mind. He answered me
at last, and said that he thought that a person could be best hidden
and lost to the world by living just a fairly ordinary life in a quiet
way in one of the larger towns in England. That was his experience
during his long life as a lawyer.

"I treasured his opinion, and formed a scheme in my mind upon it.

"Just then poor Carlotta d'A