"Forty-eight hours later I crossed the Galician frontier at Lemberg
disguised as a Polish peasant. My guardian, the Intendant, turned
me over to our friends in the valley of the Styr. After six months of
wandering, I finally reached Paris in safety. There were sorrowful
letters awaiting me. Valerie was hidden forever in the yawning
tombs of the gloomy old chapel of Jitomir, and Alixe herself wrote
of Pierre Troubetlskoi's generous blinding of the pursuit. I was,
however, prosecuted and hunted. I fled to America, for all our
plans of revolt were miserably wrecked--and by Polish traitors!

"Two years later, I learned from a fellow refugee that Pierre
Troubetskoi had been killed by accident in a great forest battle.
And to Alixe Delavigne, all the wealth which would have been
Valerie's was left by the lion-hearted man who awoke too late to
the early doom of his beloved.

"I knew naught of the family history save that the sisters were
the daughters of Colonel Delavigne, a gallant French officer, who
was murdered by the Communists in seventy-one." Alan Hawke was now
sternly eyeing the musician, who abruptly concluded: "I have never
met Alixe Delavigne since. I dare not return to Poland. My own
course has been steadily downward, and, beyond knowing that she
still possesses the splendid domains of Jitomir, we are strangers
to each other. Polish refugees have told me that she has always
administered the vast estate with liberal kindness to all. And now
you will tell me of her?" The tremulous hand of Wieniawski raised
a brimming glass of brandy to his lips. He stared about vacantly
when Hawke said:

"Madame Delavigne left Lausanne this evening on a special mission.