"
"But," persisted Steinmetz quietly, "you subscribe to the League. Four
hundred thousand rubles--they do not grow at the roadside."
"But the rubles have not my name on them."
"That may be, but we all--_they all_--know where they are likely to come
from. My dear Paul, you cannot keep up the farce any longer. You are not
an English gentleman who comes across here for sporting purposes; you do
not live in the old Castle of Osterno three months in the year because
you have a taste for mediaeval fortresses. You are a Russian prince, and
your estates are the happiest, the most enlightened in the empire. That
alone is suspicious. You collect your rents yourself. You have no German
agents--no German vampires about you. There are a thousand things
suspicious about Prince Pavlo Alexis if those that be in high places
only come to think about it. They have not come to think about
it--thanks to our care and to your English independence. But that is
only another reason why we should redouble our care. You must not be in
Russia when the Charity League is picked to pieces. There will be
trouble--half the nobility in Russia will be in it. There will be
confiscations and degradations: there will be imprisonment and Siberia
for some. You are better out of it, for you are not an Englishman; you
have not even a Foreign Office passport.
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