"A week later, while living in the palace at Helsingfors, I overheard a
conversation between the Governor-General and his son, which revealed to
me a staggering truth that I had never suspected. It was Oberg himself
who had denounced my mother to the Minister of the Interior, and had
made those cruel, baseless charges against her! Then I discerned the
reason. She being exiled, her fortune, as well as that of my father,
came to me. The reason they were scheming for Michael to marry me was in
order to obtain control of my money. I saw at once how helpless I was in
the hands of that unscrupulous pair, and I recognized, too, sufficient
of the Baron's methods as 'The Strangler of Finland,' to show me what
kind of character he was beneath that calm, eminently respectable
black-coated exterior. After deliberately sending my poor mother to
Siberia, he had assumed the role of my guardian in order that he might,
when I came of age, obtain control of my inheritance, the idea no doubt
being that I should marry Michael, and then, after the necessary legal
formalities, I should, on a trumped-up charge of conspiracy, share the
same fate as my mother had done.
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