"
"That you will never learn," she said, in a hard, changed voice.
"Because there is a conspiracy to preserve the secret!" I cried. "But I
intend to solve the mystery, and for that reason I have traveled here
from England."
The woman with the lantern smiled sadly, as though amused by my
impetuosity.
"You are on Russian soil now, m'sieur, not English," she remarked in
her broken English. "If your object were known, you would never be
spared to return to your own land. Ah!" she sighed, "you do not know the
mysteries and terrors of Finland. I am a French subject, born in Tours,
and brought to Helsingfors when I was fifteen. I have been in Finland
forty-five years. Once we were happy here, but since the Czar appointed
Baron Oberg to be Governor-General----" and she shrugged her shoulders
without finishing her sentence.
"Baron Oberg--Governor-General of Finland!" I gasped.
"Certainly. Did you not know?" she said, dropping into French. "It is
four years now that he has held supreme power to crush and Russify these
poor Finns.
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