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 CHAPTER II

"NOW YOU WILL HAVE TO JOIN US"

Tempting as the offer was which my strange companion made me, I could not bring myself to accept it without time for consideration, and my hesitation in replying irritated and seemed to anger her.

She thrust my hands away from her with petulant quickness.

"You are a man of strangely deliberate discretion, Count," she said as she turned away to the end of the room and threw herself into her chair again, from which she regarded me with a glance half scornful, half entreating.

"If I do not accept at once, believe me it is from no lack of appreciation of the honour you offer me or the charm with which it is offered, but circumstances compel me to be deliberate."

"Circumstances?" she cried, with a shrug of disdain and disappointment.

"I regret that I cannot explain them."

I could not, without telling her the whole reason of my presence in Sofia; and that was of course impossible. My secret commission was from the British Government, and the intrigue which I had to try and defeat was designed to depose her Prince, and set on the throne in his place a woman who would be a mere tool in the hands of Russia.

I am half a Roumanian by birth, my father having