"It is very good of your majesty. Miss Galloway came to me. She had heard of me, evidently. She came to me at the very moment when I was dismissed from my situation. I had been accused of a disgraceful flirtation with the son of one of the shop customers. As a matter of fact the coward had tried to kiss me and he let all the blame rest on my shoulders. I was dismissed without any chance of a further situation, I had only a few shillings in the world and an invalid sister partially dependent upon me. At that moment I was desperate enough for anything. Quite early the complication began. The name of the coward who brought all this trouble on me was Prince Boris Mazaroff."
"I am not surprised," the queen said with just a touch of weary scorn in her voice. "We are all creatures of fate. I know that I am. But the coincidence is a little strange."
"Miss Galloway wrote me a letter and asked me to call upon her in my working dress. When I saw her I could not but be struck by the amazing likeness between us. Then she unfolded her plan--the plan that we were to change places for a little time. Someone whom she cared for was in trouble and it was impossible that she should get away without being suspected. Your Majesty may guess that the somebody in trouble was no other than Mr. Charles Maxwell and at the bottom of the trouble was the missing papers relating to Asturia."
The queen nodded, her dark eyes gleaming in the light of the lamp.
"I see," she exclaimed. "Those papers that found their way into the hands of the Countess Saens. The papers that she was robbed of almost as soon as she had obtained possession of them. What an amazing daring thing to do. I seem to see quite clearly now. Miss Galloway slipped off and stole them while all the time her friends and relations thought that she was in the house of her uncle! Ah, what will not a woman do for the sake of the man she loves! And she was quite successful!"
"Quite. We know that by the scene made by the countess' maid at Merehaven House. I did not guess until the maid looked at me and said that I was the thief. Of course everybody who heard it laughed, but the woman stuck to her story. The statement was a flood of light to me, when I heard it I knew then exactly what had happened as well as if I had been present and seen the robbery."