At the first sound of the bells the old lady conscientiously lays down her knife and fork; and Ihnasko, without awaiting orders, proceeds to clear the table, and spreads another silken cover over it.
It was Lent.
"Let us draw near to our heavenly Father!" whispers the pious old lady.
Ivan kisses her cheeks, and she his.
There was a small door opening out from her bedchamber into the chapel. Opening this, Prince Ghedimin went in; and while his old grandmother, rosary in hand, began telling her beads, the tones of the organ were heard, and a man's clear voice began chanting the penitential psalm.
"What a good son and a good Christian is my Ivan Maximovitch!" murmured Anna Feodorovna, amid her prayers. "And what a lovely voice he has! He might be one of the Czar's choristers."
And amid the sounds of pealing organ and penitential psalm she reverently thanked the Lord, and, praying for the living and the faithful dead, fell into peaceful slumber in her arm-chair.
The organ still continues to peal, and penitential psalms ascend, for Ivan Maximovitch—Prince Ghedimin—is a good man, and a tender, loving son.
And yet this again is a fresh lie; for, as Ivan entered the chapel from his grandmother's room, one of the Czar's choirmen, who had been admitted by a secret door, was already in waiting there, and his task it was to sing on and play the organ until the old woman had fallen asleep.
Prince Ghedimin, meanwhile, hastily descended the secret staircase and passed into a masked corridor leading from his palace into the next house. There, quickly assuming a disguise, he jumped into a sledge awaiting him in the courtyard, and gave the coachman directions where to drive.