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It was, indeed, the library of the castle, and she was looking at it from the inside of that clock into which Gimblet had once before seen Julia Romaninov vanish.
Most men would. "Mrs. Clutsam lives in another small house of my father's, near here," she replied stiffly. "She asked Miss Romaninov to stay with her for a few days till she could arrange where to go to. This disaster naturally upset every one's plans." "She has a beautiful face," said Gimblet. "Who would think " he murmured, and stopped abruptly. "Perhaps you would like me to introduce you?"
He had seen that tweed before; the short girl with her back to him was wearing the dress in which he had seen her on the Wednesday night, searching among Lord Ashiel's papers in the library at the castle. It was Julia Romaninov beyond a doubt, and Gimblet drew back quickly and took up his position behind the funnels on the after-deck.
He told me also of the years that had intervened between that day when he had shuffled off his responsibilities on to Mrs. Meredith, and the day, not long ago, when he at last decided to hunt out his daughter. "He told me of his fears that she should prove to be none other than Julia Romaninov, and of how, in desperation, he had applied to you for help, and of how you had discovered my existence.
More than that, there has been a Russian in your very midst who, I am afraid, you will be shocked to hear, is hand in glove with him." "Whom do you mean?" exclaimed Mark, "not not Julia Romaninov?" It seemed to the detective that he winced as he uttered the name of the girl. Silently Gimblet bowed his head, and for a minute the two men stood without a word.
"It is more than a year, now," continued Lord Ashiel, after a pause, "since the girl Julia Romaninov came to my sister in London, with a letter of introduction from our ambassador in Russia. It was not until my sister invited her down to Scotland that I heard anything about her.
Not, in fact, till the day before she arrived, for I always tell my sister to ask any girls she pleases to Inverashiel, and she very seldom bothers me about it. You can imagine my feelings when I heard that Julia Romaninov was expected within a few hours, and had indeed already started from London. It was too late to try and stop her, and my first impulse was flight.
Clutsam went away too; she had some one coming to stay with her at her own house near by. Both the young men went stalking on different parts of the forest, and Lord Ashiel and I, with the two other girls, spent the morning on the loch trolling for salmon; but we didn't get a rise. "In the afternoon I walked up the river with Julia Romaninov; we talked about our schooldays.
I think feeling ill and tired made him irritable, and his temper was very quick. But he was always nice to me." "Who wasn't he nice too?" "Well, I don't think he liked Miss Romaninov much, In fact, she seemed to get on his nerves, and sometimes he was so rude to her that I used to wonder that she stayed.
"The lady who adopted me was Countess Romaninov, and I believed myself her child till a day or two before she died, when she told me, to my lasting regret, the true story of my origin. But I was brought up a Russian, and I shall never feel myself to be English. Somehow the soil you live on in your childhood seems to get into your bones, as you say here.
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