king of you in Russia far away. They
cannot separate us, dear Alban, while we love."

He had no word to answer this and could but harp again upon all the
promise of his fine resolution. When the matter-of-fact official came to
find him, Lois was close in his embrace and there were tears of regret
in his eyes.

CHAPTER XXIX

ALBAN RETURNS TO LONDON

They returned to the great courtyard, but not to Zaniloff's room as the
promise had been. Here by the gates there stood a passable private
carriage, and into this Alban perceived that he was to be hustled. The
bestarred transcriber of the upper story, he who waged the battle of the
flies, now stood by the carriage door and appeared to be ill at ease.
Evidently his study of strange tongues still troubled him.

"Pardon, mein Herr--how in English--khorosho?" he asked very
deferentially.

"It means 'that's all right,' sir." Alban answered immediately.

"It means that,--ah, nitchevo--je ne m'en souviens jamais."

He held the door open and Alban entered the carriage without a word.
Apparently they still waited for someone and five minutes passed and
found their attitudes unchanged. Then Zaniloff himself appeared full of
bustle and business but in a temper modified toward concession.

"I am taking you back to your hotel, mein Herr," he said to Alban, "it
is the Governor's order. You will leave Warsaw to-night. Those are our
instructions."

He sank back in the cushions and the great gates were shut behind them
with a sonorous clang. Out in the streets the outbreak of the earlier
hours had been a veritable battle but was now a truce. The whole city
seemed to be swarming with troops. Well might Zaniloff think of other
things.

"Is the Count better, sir?" Alban ventured presently.

"He will live," was the dry response, "at least the doctors say so."

"And you have discovered the truth about the affair?"

"The man who attacked him was shot on the Rymarska half an hour ago."

"Then that is why you are taking me back to my hotel?"

"There is positively no other reason," said the Chief.

The statement was frank to the point of brutality, but it carried also
such a message of hope that Alban hardly dared to repeat the words of it
even to himself; there was no longer any possibility of a capital charge
against the child he had just left in the wretched stable. Let the other
facts be as they might, these people could not detain Lois Boriskoff
upon the Count's affai