Page:William Le Queux - The Czar's Spy.djvu/398

376 a person once in that rumbling vehicle is as you know, lost for ever to the world. I watched her from the window being placed in that fatal conveyance, and then I think I must have fainted for I recollect nothing more until I found myself upon the floor, with the grey dawn spreading, and all the horrible truth came back to me. My mother was gone from me for ever!

"In sheer desperation I went to the Ministry of the Interior and sought an interview with the Baron, who, when I told him of the disaster appeared greatly concerned, and went at once to the Police Department to make inquiry. Next day. however he came to me with the news that the charge against my mother had been proved by a statement of the woman Shiproff herself, and that she had already started on her long journey to Siberia — she had been exiled to one of those dreaded Arctic settlements beyond Yakutsk, a place where it is almost eternal winter, and where the conditions of life are such that half the convicts are insane. The Baron, however, declared that, as my father's friend, it was his duty to act as guardian to me, and that as my father had been English I ought to be put to an English school. Therefore, under his self-assumed title of uncle, he took me to Chichester. For years I remained there, until one day he came suddenly and fetched me away, taking me over to Helsingfors — for the Czar had now appointed him Governor-General of Finland. There, for the first time, he introduced me to his son Michael, a pimply-faced lieutenant of cavalry, and said in a most decisive