Chapter 16 A
Strange ConfessionI had last seen the strange,
beautiful, wicked woman known as the Princess Y—— bending in a
passion of hysterical remorse over the body of the man she had
driven to death, on the snow-clad train outside Mukden.
I have had some experience of women, and especially of the class
which mixes in the secret politics of the European Courts. But
Sophia Y—— was an enigma to me. There was nothing about her which
suggested the adventuress. And there was much which tended to
support the story which had won the belief of her august
mistress—that she was an involuntary agent, who had been victimized
by an unscrupulous minister of police, by means of a false charge,
and who genuinely loathed the tasks she was too feeble to
refuse.
I had not been back in Peters
