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“We shan’t pull very far together if you don’t.”

“To be candid, I am not sure what the man’s secret object is—presuming, that is, he has one. We know little of him beyond the fact that he is an adventurer and a musician of exceptional brilliance, and that the Duchess Stephanie has conceived a great—I suppose, I should say—fondness for him. She declares she will marry him—in defiance of the Emperor’s prohibition: a marriage of the kind being outside the pale of possibility, of course, owing to her relationship to the Imperial Family.”

“You think he’s after her money?”

“What other conclusion can one draw? The Duchess is twenty years older than he; she is the reverse of prepossessing in appearance; and he is young, handsome and certainly clever. Apart from other reasons the marriage would be a tragedy.”

“And then there are these papers?”

“And then there are these papers, as you say. She is entirely dominated by him, and there is no doubt she acted at his instigation and—well, purloined them and carried them to him.”