"What have you been doing to my brother Peter?" he cried.
Marie could not speak.
"Read that," said the count, as he thrust the telegram into her shaking hand.
"Peter hanged himself last night." She read the message aloud in a voice that grated on him. "He was a foolish boy," she remarked indifferently. "I had forgotten his existence."
The tragic fate of Peter Tarnowska was still being talked about when Alexis Bozevsky became the lover of the countess. He was the type of man who looks and acts like the hero of a melodrama. He was tall, with a superb figure, a moustache that seems to have been irresistible, a bonhomie men and women were hypnotized by, and he was, undoubtedly, a past master in the art of pleasing romantically-minded ladies.
He penned a couple of letters to Marie, which won her for him, body and soul. She ran the most terrible risks on his behalf once she was in love with him, and the woman who was a queen amongst men now gladly became the slave of this handsome officer of the Imperial Guard.
The story of their love is brief and tragic and very melodramatic. It is difficult to believe that it all happened so recently as 1907. The jealous husband, the handsome lover, the cigarette-smoking Russian countess with the beautiful face and dark eyes—all belong to the stage; yet the Tarnowskas and Alexis Bozevsky were real personages, and two of them are living to-day.
For some time Marie's latest conquest was unnoticed by her husband, who hoped that his brother's suicide would reform her. When he stumbled upon the truth he simultaneously resolved to kill Bozevsky in a duel. The first encounter between the jealous husband and the handsome lover took place in the house of the former. Tarnowska was armed, but he would not shoot a defenceless foe, and he flung on the table a revolver for his enemy.
"We will settle it here," he said, with the laugh of a madman.
Bozevsky was terrified by that laugh, and fled from the apartment to tell Marie what had happened. They agreed on a course of action, knowing that there was no room in the world for both the count and the officer, and they felt that they were helpless to avert the approaching tragedy.