"Translate for Her, She's Only the Nursemaid," the Countess Said — The Ambassador Bowed to Her
Chapter 12
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Upstairs, the nursery had its own view of events. Rupert said that he had always known Lo-Lo was somebody. Frances said that she had suspected it since the Edgeworth, because nobody fetches the right volume by accident. Louisa said that she would learn Russian immediately, and did, to the extent of three words, which she used on the kitchen cat. Perry said nothing, having been asleep, and could not be made to believe that he had missed anything.Natasha said in Russian, "Papa says your papa saved Mama. So you are my sister.""Then I have two sisters in this room," said Theodora, "and a brother, and a very small brother, and that is a great deal more family than I had last week."The Duke came on Friday. He came with the Count and with a leather case, and he asked to see Miss Marlow in the library, with Mrs. Bragg at the door for form's sake.He laid out on the table the letter in which a Treasury clerk had written that Richard Marlow had no doubt spent the money on himself, and beside it a sworn statement by Count Zabelin written that morning at the Russian Embassy, witnessed and sealed, describing every horse, courier, and night's lodging that the courier Marlow had paid for between Petersburg and the Russian headquarters in the year '12, because the Count had made it his business after the fire to find out."The Foreign Secretary has read both," said the Duke. "The claim will be paid in full with interest from '16, and the note in the margin will be struck through in the clerk's own hand in my presence next week. I thought you would like to be there."She could not speak. She put her hand flat on the Treasury letter the way the Count had put his on the table."It will not be a fortune," said the Duke. "Something under 5,000 pounds. Enough for a small house and a lady's independence. Enough that nobody need ever call you Marlow again.""Everybody will call me Marlow," she said. "It is my name. It is the only thing I kept.""Then keep it," said the Duke, "for as long as you choose to."Letters between London and Petersburg took three weeks by the Baltic in summer and six in winter when the Gulf froze. So it was late June before the Count's dispatch reached the Tsar, and the end of July before the answer came back. The answer came with a small enameled box, and in the box a ring that had belonged to Countess Zabelina, and a letter in the Emperor's own secretary's hand that said that the Emperor had been told the story of the courier Marlow and did not forget it.The Earl of Stanwick read it aloud in the drawing room, and looked for the first time in a year like a man who had been given something rather than a man who had got it.