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I said bluntly. "And I love her, too. I want you to know that; though I am no more to her than than the man who waits on her at dinner, or who opens a cab door for her and gets a smile and a coin for his service!" It was a childish outburst, perhaps, but it moved Loris Solovieff to a queer response. "I understand," he said softly in French.
I had just finished the light meal which was all Dr. Nabokof would allow me, when Mishka announced "Count Solovieff," and the Grand Duke Loris entered. "Please don't rise, Mr. Wynn," he said in English. "I have come to thank you for your timely aid. You are better? That is good. You got a nasty knock on the head just at the end of the fun, which was much too bad!
Now, how did you get here? Some one must have told you, guided you?" "That I can't tell you." "You mean you won't?" "Well, put it that way if you like." "Don't be a fool, Wynn; I am asking you for your own sake. If you don't tell me, you'll be made to tell later. You haven't the least idea what you've let yourself in for, man! Come, did not Count Solovieff you know well who I mean bring you here?"
Anyhow, I shouldn't have had the cheek to speak to her; she was with an awfully swagger set. Count Loris Solovieff was one of 'em. He's really the Grand Duke Loris, you know, though he prefers to go about incog. more often than not. He was talking to Miss Pendennis. Here's the office. I won't come in. Perhaps I'll turn up and see you off to-night.
Simple concussion, that is all; and you will be all right in a day or two, if you will keep quiet. I wish I could say that of all my patients! The good Mishka has been keeping the bandages wet? Yes; he is a faithful fellow, that Mishka; but you will find him surly, hein? That is because Count Solovieff left him behind in attendance on you." So that was the name, Count Solovieff.
But we were going to save her, we would save her. "A forlorn hope" even Loris Solovieff had called it. Nothing of the kind. Could anything that such a man as he attempted be a forlorn hope; and together, working loyally side by side, what could we not dare, and accomplish? Nothing seemed impossible to-night. "Merely an earth to cleave, a sea to part!"
In those moments one phase of her complex nature had been uppermost; and in those moments she loved me, me, Maurice Wynn, not Loris Solovieff, or any other!
Where had I heard it before? I remembered instantly. "You mean the Grand Duke Loris?" I asked deliberately. His dark eyes twinkled through their glasses. "Eh bien, it is the same thing. He is travelling incognito, you understand, though he can scarcely expect to pass unrecognized, hein? He is a very headstrong young man, Count Solovieff, and he has some miraculous escapes!
But like the prospector, who suffers untold hardships seeking the wealth of gold, these seekers of wealth in furs could not relinquish the wild freedom of the perilous life. They signed contracts to hunt with Glottoff for the year. It is no part of this story to tell how the Cossack, Solovieff, entered on a campaign of punishment for the Aleuts when he came.
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