Page:William Le Queux - The Czar's Spy.djvu/417

Rh to set foot on English soil again on pain of arrest.

Olinto Santini has recently opened a small restaurant in Western Road, Brighton, and is, I believe, doing very well.

And ourselves! Well, what can I really tell you? Mere words fail to tell you of the completeness of our happiness. It is idyllic—that is all I can say.

My proposal of marriage was made to Elma a very few days after she wrote down her startling and romantic story, and a year ago at a little village church in Hertfordshire we became man and wife, there being present at our wedding Madame Heath, my bride's mother, to whom, by my exertions in official quarters in Petersburg, the Czar's clemency was extended, and she was released from that far-off Arctic prison to which she had been sent with such cruel injustice.

Two of the greatest London specialists have continually treated my dear wife, and under them she has already recovered her speech—so far, indeed, that she can now whisper in a low, soft voice. But they tell me they are hopeful that ere long her voice will become stronger, and speech practically restored. Already, too, she can begin to hear.

After all the storms and perils of the past, our lives are now indeed full of a calm, sweet peace. In our own comfortable little house, with its trellised porch covered with roses and honeysuckle, that faces the blue Channel at St. Margaret's Bay, beyond Dover, we lead a life of mutual trust and boundless love. We are supremely content—the happiest pair in all the world, we think.