at."

"Ah, Sister!" I cried. "You are asking too great a sacrifice of me. I
come here from England, nay, from Italy in search of her, to question
her regarding a strange mystery and to learn the truth. Surely I may be
permitted to speak with her?"

"You wish to learn the truth, sir!" remarked the woman. "I thought you
were her lover--that you merely wished to see her once again."

"No, I am not her lover," I answered. "Indeed, we have never yet met.
But I am in search of the truth from her own lips."

"That you will never learn," she said, in a hard, changed voice.

"Because there is a conspiracy to preserve the secret!" I cried. "But I
intend to solve the mystery, and for that reason I have traveled here
from England."

The woman with the lantern smiled sadly, as though amused by my
impetuosity.

"You are on Russian soil now, m'sieur, not English," she remarked in
her broken English. "If your object were known, you would never be
spared to return to your own land. Ah!" she sighed, "you do not know the
mysteries and terrors of Finland. I am a French subject, born in Tours,
and brought to Helsingfors when I was fifteen. I have been in Finland
forty-five years. Once we were happy here, but since the Czar appointed
Baron Oberg to be Governor-General----" and she shrugged her shoulders
without finishing her sentence.

"Baron Oberg--Governor-General of Finland!" I gasped.

"Certainly. Did you not know?" she said, dropping into French. "It is
four years now that he has held supreme power to crush and Russify these
poor Finns. Ah, m'sieur! this country, once so prosperous, is a blot
upon the face of Europe. His methods are the worst and most unscrupulous
of any employed by Russia. Before he came here he was the best hated man
in Petersburg, and that, they say, is why the Emperor sent him to us."

"And he is uncle of this young lady, Elma Heath?"

"Uncle? Ah! I don't know that, m'sieur. I have never been told so. His
niece--poor young lady!--can that be? Surely not!"

"Why not?" I asked.

But the woman gave me no reason; she only exhibited her palms and
sighed. She seemed to have compassion upon the girl I sought; her heart
was really softer than I had believed it to be.

"Where does this Baron live?" I asked, surprised that he should occupy
so high a place in Russian officialdom--the representative of the Czar,
with powers as great as the Emperor himself.

"At the Government Palace, in Helsingfors."

"And E