At nine o'clock the long train came to a standstill, seventeen minutes late at Luga, and ample time was allowed for a leisurely breakfast in the buffet of the station. The restaurant was thronged with numerous passengers, most of whom seemed hardly yet awake, while many were unkempt and dishevelled, as if they had had little sleep during the night.

Jennie found a small table and sat down beside it, ordering her coffee and rolls from the waiter who came to serve her. Looking round at the cosmopolitan company, and listening to the many languages, whose clash gave a Babel air to the restaurant, Jennie fell to musing on the strange experiences she had encountered since leaving London. It seemed to her she had been taking part in some ghastly nightmare, and she shuddered as she thought of the lawlessness, under cover of law, of this great and despotic empire, where even the ruler was under the surveillance of his subordinates, and could not get a letter out of his own dominion in safety, were he so minded. In her day-dream she became conscious, without noting its application to herself, that a man was standing before her table; then a voice which made her heart stop said,--

"Ah, lost Princess!"

She placed her hand suddenly to her throat, for the catch in her breath seemed to be suffocating her, then looked up and saw Lord Donal Stirling, in the ordinary everyday dress of an English gentleman, as well groomed as if he had come, not from a train, but from his own house. There was a kindly smile on his lips and a sparkle in his eyes, but his face was of ghastly pallor.

"Oh, Lord Donal!" she cried, regarding him with eyes of wonder and fear, "what is wrong with you?"

"Nothing," the young man replied, with an attempt at a laugh; "nothing, now that I have found you, Princess. I have been making a night of it, that's all, and am suffering the consequences in the morning. May I sit down?"

He dropped into a chair on the other side of the table, like a man thoroughly exhausted, unable to stand longer, and went on,--

"Like all dissipated men, I am going to break my fast on stimulants. Waiter," he said, "bring me a large glass of your best brandy."

"And, waiter," interjected Jennie in French, "bring two breakfasts. I suppose it was not a meal that you ordered just now, Lord Donal?"

"I have ordered my breakfast," he said; "still, it pleads in my favour that I do not carry brandy with me, as I ought to do, and so must drink the vile stuff they call their best here."

"You should eat as well," she insisted, taking charge of him as if she had every right to do so.

"All shall be as you say, now that I have the happiness of seeing you sitting opposite me, but don't be surprised if I show a most unappreciative appetite."

"What is the matter?" she asked breathlessly. "You certainly look very ill."

"I have been drugged and robbed," he replied, lowering his voice. "I imagine I came to close quarters with death itself. I have spent a night in Hades, and this morning am barely able to stagger; but the sight of you, Princess--Ah, well, I feel once more that I belong to the land of the living!"

"Please do not call me Princess," said the girl, looking down at the tablecloth.

"Then what am I to call you, Princess?"

"My name is Jennie Baxter," she said in a low voice.

"Miss Jennie Baxter?" he asked eagerly, with emphasis on the first word.

"Miss Jennie Baxter," she answered, still not looking up at him.

He leaned back in his chair and said,--

"Well, this is not such a bad world, after all. To think of meeting you here in Russia! Have you been in St. Petersburg, then?"

"Yes. I am a newspaper woman," explained Jennie hurriedly. "When you met me before, I was there surreptitiously--fraudulently, if you like; I was there to--to write a report of it for my paper. I can never thank you enough, Lord Donal, for your kindness to me that evening."

"Your thanks are belated," said the young man, with a visible attempt at gaiety. "You should have written and acknowledged the kindness you are good enough to say I rendered to you. You knew my address, and etiquette demanded that you should make your acknowledgments."

"I was reluctant to write," said Jennie, a smile hovering round her lips, "fearing my letter might act as a clue. I had no wish to interfere with the legitimate business of Mr. Cadbury Taylor."

"Great heavens!" cried the young man, "how came you to know about that? But of course the Princess von Steinheimer told you of it. She wrote to me charging me with all sorts of wickedness for endeavouring to find you."

"No, Lord Donal, I did not learn it from her. In fact, if you had opened the door of the inner room at Mr. Cadbury Taylor's a little quicker, you would have come upon me, for I was the assistant who tried to persuade him that you really met the Princess von Steinheimer."

Lord Donal, for the first time, laughed heartily.

"Well, if that doesn't beat all! And I suppose Cadbury Taylor hasn't the slightest suspicion that you are the person he was looking for?"

"No, not the slightest."

"I say! that is the best joke I have heard in ten years," said Lord Donal; and here, breakfast arriving, Jennie gave him his directions.

"You are to drink a small portion of that brandy," she said, "and then put the rest in your coffee. You must eat a good breakfast, and that will help you to forget your troubles,--that is, if you have any real troubles."

"Oh, my troubles are real enough," said the young man. "When I met you before, Princess, I was reasonably successful. We even talked about ambassadorships, didn't we, in spite of the fact that ambassadors were making themselves unnecessarily obtrusive that night? Now you see before you a ruined man. No, I am not joking; it is true. I was given a commission, or, rather, knowing the danger there was in it, I begged that the commission might be given me. It was merely to take a letter from St. Petersburg to London. I have failed, and when that is said, all is said."

"But surely," cried the girl, blushing guiltily as she realized that this was the man she had been sent to rob, "you could not be expected to ward off such a lawless attempt at murder as you have been the victim of?"

"That is just what I expected, and what I supposed I could ward off. In my profession--which, after all has a great similarity to yours, except that I think we have to do more lying in ours--there must be no such word as fail. The very best excuses are listened to with tolerance, perhaps, and a shrug of the shoulders; but failure, no matter from what cause, is fell doom. I have failed. I shall not make any excuses. I will go to London and say merely, 'The Russian police have robbed me.' Oh, I know perfectly well who did the trick, and how it was done. Then I shall send in my resignation. They will accept it with polite words of regret, and will say to each other, 'Poor fellow, he had a brilliant career before him, but he got drunk, or something, and fell into the ditch.' Ah, well, we won't talk any more about it."

"Then you don't despise the newspaper profession, Lord Donal?"

"Despise it! Bless you, no: I look up to it. Belonging myself to a profession very much lower down in the scale of morality, as I have said. But, Princess," he added, leaning towards her, "will you resign from the newspaper if I resign from diplomacy?"

The girl slowly shook her head, her eyes on the tablecloth before her.

"I will telegraph my resignation," he said impetuously, "if you will telegraph yours to your paper."

"You are feeling ill and worried this morning, Lord Donal, and so you take a pessimistic view of life. You must not resign."

"Oh, but I must. I have failed, and that is enough."

"It isn't enough. You must do nothing until you reach London."

"I like your word must, Jennie," said the young man audaciously. "It implies something, you know."

"What does it imply, Lord Donal?" she asked, glancing up at him.

"It implies that you are going to leave the 'Lord' off my name."

"That wouldn't be very difficult," replied Jennie.

"I am delighted to hear you say so," exclaimed his lordship; "and now, that I may know how it sounds from your dear lips, call me Don."

"No; if I ever consented to omit the title, I should call you Donal. I like the name in its entirety."

He reached his hand across the table. "Are you willing then, to accept a man at the very lowest ebb of his fortunes? I know that if I were of the mould that heroes are made of, I would hesitate to proffer you a blighted life. But I loved you the moment I saw you; and, remembering my fruitless search for you, I cannot run the risk of losing you again; I have not the courage."

She placed her hand in his and looked him, for the first time, squarely in the eyes.

"Are you sure, Donal," she said, "that I am not a mere effigy on which you are hanging the worn-out garments of a past affection? You thought I was the Princess at first."

"No, I didn't," he protested. "As soon as I heard you speak, I knew you were the one I was destined to meet."

"Ah, Donal, Donal, at lovers' perjuries they say Jove laughs. I don't think you were quite so certain as all that. But I, too, am a coward, and I dare not refuse you."

Lord Donal glanced quickly about him; the room was still crowded. Even the Berlin Express gave them a long time for breakfast, and was in no hurry to move westward. His hurried gaze returned to her and he sighed.

"What an unholy spot for a proposal!" he whispered; "and yet they call Russia the Great Lone Land. Oh, that we had a portion of it entirely to ourselves!"

The girl sat there, a smile on her pretty lips that Lord Donal thought most tantalizing. A railway official announced in a loud voice that the train was about to resume its journey. There was a general shuffling of feet as the passengers rose to take their places.

"Brothers and sisters kiss each other, you know, on the eve of a railway journey," said Lord Donal, taking advantage of the confusion.

Jennie Baxter made no protest.

"There is plenty of time," he whispered. "I know the leisurely nature of Russian trains. Now I am going to the telegraph office, to send in my resignation, and I want you to come with me and send in yours."

"No, Lord Donal," said the girl.

"Aren't you going to resign?" he asked, in surprise.

"Yes, all in good time; but you are not."

"Oh, I say," he cried, "it is really imperative. I'll tell you all about it when we get on the train."

"It is really imperative that you should not send in your resignation. Indeed, Donal, you need not look at me with that surprised air. You may as well get accustomed to dictation at once. You did it yourself, you know. You can't say that I encouraged you. I eluded the vigilant Cadbury Taylor as long as I could. But, if there is time, go to the telegraph office and send a message to the real Princess, Palace Steinheimer, Vienna. Say you are engaged to be married to Jennie Baxter, and ask her to telegraph you her congratulations at Berlin."

"I'll do it," replied the young man with gratifying alacrity.

When Lord Donal came out of the telegraph office, Jennie said to him, "Wait a moment while I go into the sleeping car and get my rugs and handbag."

"I'll go for them," he cried impetuously.

"Oh, no," she said. "I'll tell you why, later. The conductor is a villain and was in collusion with the police."

"Oh, I know that," said Lord Donal. "Poor devil, he can't help himself; he must do what the police order him to do, while he is in Russia."

"I'll get my things and go into an ordinary first class carriage. When I pass this door, you must get your belongings and come and find me. There is still time, and I don't want the conductor to see us together."

"Very well," said the young man with exemplary obedience.