to me. It enclosed one from M. H---- to Sir John. It was on the
latter that I pounced. It was written in French, but even at the
first hasty reading I could make it out sufficiently to know that
it was of far greater importance than even in my wildest dreams I
had dared to imagine.

"I never saw Lady Chillington so excited as she was during the few
moments which I took up in reading the letter. During the nine days
that had elapsed since the writing of her letter to Sir John she
had treated me somewhat slightingly; there was, or so I fancied, a
spice of contempt in her manner towards me. The step I had induced
her to take in writing to Sir John had met with no approbation at
her hands; it had seemed to her an utterly futile and ridiculous
thing to do; therefore was I now proportionately well pleased to
find that my wild idea had been productive of such excellent fruit.

"'I must certainly compliment you, Mr. Madgin, on the success of
your first step,' said her ladyship. 'It was like one of the fine
intuitions of genius to imagine that you saw a way to reach M.
Platzoff through the Russian Embassy. You have been fully justified
by the result. Madgin, the man yet lives!--the man whose
sacrilegious hands robbed my dead son of that which he had left as
a sacred gift to his mother. May the curse of a widowed mother
attend him through life! Let me hear the letter again, Madgin; or
stay, I will read it myself: your French is execrable. Ha, ha!
Monsieur Paul Platzoff, we shall have our revenge out of you yet.'

"She read the letter through for the second time with a sort of
deliberate eagerness which showed me how deeply interested her
heart was in the affair. She dropped her eye-glass and gave a great