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MY OFFICIAL WIFE
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there was only one thing to be done. With the worst grace in the world, he proceeded to do it.
"I am Colonel Lennox, of New York, and this is — is my — wife," he gulped. His evil genius prompted him to add the wholly gratuitous information that they were on their way to St. Petersburg to see their daughter, Marguerite Welatsky.
"Welatsky!" exclaimed the insufferable Baron, beaming with pleasant surprise. "Widow of Peter Welatskv ? Ah then, you are friends
inflated, intolerably complacent) was relating his exploits in the police service. He was now working, he said, on the clue that a dangerous petticoat Nihilist, named Helene Marie, would probably soon attempt to enter the country.
"St. Petersburg f"
With the sensation of a criminal about to be hanged, Lennox gathered his belongings and those of the wife whisked on him by Fate, and followed the Baron into the pandemonium of the great station. There, to his iin
HAD OR HAD XOT HELENE MARIE BEEN ONE OF THOSE WOMEN HE HAD JUST SEEN STRUGGLING IN THE HANDS OF THE POLICE
of my friends. Permit me to accompany you to St. Petersburg."
The Baron and the lady did all the talking on this part of the journey. Sunk in a profound gloom, Lennox reviewed the situation, seeking a loophole of escape. But. like Don Quixote, his chivalrous impulses seemed to have landed him, as he mentally phrased it, "in the very devil of a mess." He pictured himself beating hemp or at some other convict pastime in Siberian wilds ; he pictured his wife's frenzy and. his daughter's astonishment on perceiving her new "mother." From the fragments of his fellow travelers' conversation that penetrated his gloom he learnt that the Baron (chest
mense relief — that of the criminal granted an unexpected reprieve — he found only Marguerite's brother-inlaw, Constantine Welatsky, awaiting them. Between his effusive greeting and the no less effusive farewells of the Baron, Lennox learnt, with unparental joy, that his daughter was ill and out of town for a few days. But before the Baron disappeared, he had presented the stranger of the passport to Welatsky as his "most charming sister-in-law," and the harm had been done. There was no doubt that the susceptible Constantine wras overjoyed at the relationship. The lady played her part perfectly, and it was her tact that slurred gracefully over Constantine 's