MISS HILDRETH.

A Novel.

BY A. DE GRASSE STEVENS,

AUTHOR OF "OLD BOSTON," "THE LOST DAUPHIN,"
"WEIGHED IN THE BALANCE," ETC.

In Three Volumes.
VOL. II.

LONDON:
WARD AND DOWNEY,
12, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C.
1888.

[All rights reserved.]

Copyright by A. de Grasse Stevens, 1888.

CONTENTS.

MISS HILDRETH.

CHAPTER I.

A FACE FROM OUT A CRIME.

The same dazzling and brilliant sunshine, that for so many weeks had held sway in Petersburg, was still beautifying the Tsar's great capital, and gilding all things with an illusory sheen, which had all the appearance of true gold, but which fled away at the approach of darkness, leaving bare the cankerous fever spots, the dry bones and wasting disease of the most tyrannous, but most doomed phenomenon of autocratic power.

During all the early hours of morning the sleeping city lay bathed in this wonderful alchemy; the Neva resting tranquil beneath the spell, even its cold grey waters catching reflections from the sun-god's rays. From above its low bank rose a long grey stone wall, broken here and there into sharp angles and protected by recurrent cannon, set at regular intervals; beyond this a tall and slender spire shot up high into the air, graceful and quivering with a thousand golden lights, that seemed to break against it, and then fling the fragments broadcast with careless prodigality; these in falling touched again the fluttering flag on the white belfry, glanced athwart the Imperial mint, and awoke myriad reflections in the façade of the Winter Palace.

This tall spire, shooting upwards like a lance, is the crowning glory of Russia's great State prison, and Russia's Imperial tomb of kings, the grim fortress of Petropavlovsk. It is a familiar sight to Petersburg's populace, as they pass to and fro across the Troitski Bridge, or linger in the spacious Boulevard-park, which is never empty, and through which the dwellers on the Petersburg side go in and out to their homes.

Beneath its solid foundations lie the bones of Russia's greatest sovereigns; within its granite walls languish many of Russia's truest patriots; while without its precincts, separated only by a few rods, lying almost within its shadow, rises the stately palace, within which lives Russia's Tsar, conscious always of the everlasting surveillance of Peter's prison, yet unable to cast it from him, or flee before it.

It was very early in the day, about a month after Olga Naundorff's interview with Ivor Tolskoi, and as yet but few people were astir in the city's streets, save those whose avocations called them forth in the pursuance of itinerant trade. Now and then a mounted orderly would ride past, leading an uncaparisoned horse by a long rein, the iron hoofs clattering over the bridge, breaking clear and distinct across the sharp morning air; presently they would disappear under the arched entrance to the barracks, and then, perhaps, a dark, sombre figure would come next, passing swiftly along, with secrecy written on every line of the face and habiliments, to be swallowed up in the frowning doorway of the Imperial Chancellerie; while those he passed on his way drew back instinctively, the women crossing themselves furtively, the men cursing below their breath. For was not this an emissary of that terrible secret police, from whom no one was safe, whose inexorable will was as iron and blood? And who could say who would be the next in turn to feel that cruel hand upon his throat, and know, with helpless certainty, that Petropavlovsk was his eternal destination?

Just as the clocks on tower and steeple struck seven, following the single notes by the ecclesiastical melody of triumph, "How glorious is our Lord in Sion," a young man appeared, walking quickly, and with long, swinging steps, across the Troitski Bridge. He was tall and straight, and though muffled in a long coat and profuse furs, the yellow tint of his close-cut curls beneath his sable cap, his fresh complexion and boyish gaiety of appearance, at once betrayed him to be Ivor Tolskoi.

He was humming lightly as he walked some half-remembered refrain from last night's ball or opera, but as he reached the middle of the bridge he halted, and folding his arms upon the parapet looked out across the marshy delta of the river, to where the Finnish Gulf made an indistinct grey line.

The gloomy fortress frowned heavily upon him, but the sun's shafts were making merry with the Palace windows, and Ivor's thoughts had more just then to do with hope and love, than with treachery and despair. The opera melody died on his lips unfinished and he heeded it not; his fancy had leapt the bounds of prosaic realism and was wandering as it listed in the realms of conjecture.

It was of Olga he thought as he wondered with idle curiosity which might be her casement among those that glittered and gleamed like jewels in a crystal setting, across the great marble front of the Winter Palace. If he waited long enough would he see the blind raised, the silken hangings withdrawn, and the face of his lady-love look forth to greet the day? Then would he, standing below her, bare his fair head and veil his bold blue eyes, and pray the passing wind to carry to her his message of fealty and true love.

But the windows remained hermetically sealed, the curtains undrawn, and presently Ivor with a shrug of his shoulders, a laugh at his sentimentality, and the fragment of song once more on his lips, passed on his way, looking neither to the right nor the left, and vanished within the heavy portals of the Imperial Chancellerie.

Mounting one flight of stairs with quick step, and passing along a short corridor, Ivor knocked at a closed door, and hearing the sharp French "entrez," opened it and stepped within that inner chamber where so few weeks ago Vladimir Mellikoff had weighed his chances, and made his choice.

Patouchki sat, as then, at the table writing; and without raising his eyes from his occupation, bade the young secretary good-morning, signing him to his place by a gesture of his left hand.

Ivor obeyed at once, and for some time only the rapid passing to and fro of the quill pens upon the paper were the only sounds.

Ivor Tolskoi had removed his heavy outside wraps and thus revealed the fact that he still wore evening-dress, and that a white rose-bud lingered in his button-hole, its freshness somewhat tarnished, but its perfume as sweet as ever.

After about half an hour's silence, Patouchki pushed back his chair and laid down his pen, passing his hand rapidly across his forehead once or twice, and looking keenly at his young companion as he did so. In the cruelly frank and searching morning light the face seemed to lose something of its pristine youth; the faint lines about the eyes and mouth became accentuated, the pallor of the temples more noticeable, the cruelty of lips and chin more pronounced. He did not look up however, though aware of the chief's scrutiny, until Patouchki's harsh voice and bullet-like sentences broke the silence.

"Burning the candle at both ends are you, Ivor? Pardon me if I remind you that wilful waste will scarcely benefit yourself, or us. Let me also remind you that that moderation in all things of which the apostle speaks, has always produced far more lasting results than reckless enthusiasm and imprudent zeal."

The young man flushed slightly as he replied: "If you would imply, chief, that my present dress is scarcely suited to my present occupation, I acknowledge the reproof with all promptitude. I was late at the Court Ball last night, and had not time to return to my apartments before making my journey across the bridge. I could not fail in that, since it was undertaken by your orders, consequently I must beg your pardon for appearing in such attire."

The words were apologetic enough, but the tone was slightly antagonistic. Patouchki looked more closely at him; it was not usual for his subordinates to use any but obsequious words and tones when addressing him, and his quick ear caught the foreign ring in Ivor's voice. He passed it by, however, without open comment, though inscribing it on the tablets of his memory, and replied, calmly:

"And have you brought me confirmation of the business on which I sent you?"

"Yes, chief," answered the young man, shortly. "I saw the man Mattalini, who is a veritable specimen of Southern Italy intrigue and falsehood. He would rather lie than tell the truth, I take it; but he will be faithful enough to the Chancellerie if paid sufficiently. He had arrived only last night from Paris, and brought news of Count Vladimir Mellikoff's occupations and associates in gay Lutetia."

A slight sneer curled Ivor's lips as he spoke the Count's name, which was no more lost upon the chief than the unusual ring in his voice a moment before.

"Tolskoi grows restive," he mused, letting his keen black eyes rest piercingly on the young man's face for several moments; "nor is he quite frank with me. He keeps something back concerning Vladimir, whom I have noticed he never mentions without a covert sneer. There is without doubt a woman in the case. It is always so; Eve's daughters ruin our most promising patriots, sapping their energy, their spirit, their wit, and talent, by slow but sure degrees. And for what? A gleam of white teeth in a dangerous smile, the pressure of a traitorous hand, the hypocrite tears in melting eyes! Ah, bah! It's the old old story of the garden, for ever repeating itself—'the woman tempted me and I did eat;' and eating of the forbidden fruit, have become dead to all things save the unsatisfied desire it creates but never satisfies."

Aloud he said: "Did Mattalini give you no packet or papers for me?"

"Yes, chief," replied Tolskoi, "here they are," taking from his inner pocket a small sealed envelope, and holding it out to Patouchki. As the latter's long fingers closed over it, Ivor continued, in a half-nervous, half-jocular tone, and touching his fair moustache with his white fingers: "Might one interested in the cause inquire, chief, what news you have of Count Mellikoff and his mission? It is something of an open secret why he has gone in certain circles, and I, for one, should be glad to know how far he has succeeded."

"To pass on the information to those of your friends who are so keenly interested in and solicitous for the welfare of our father, the Tsar?" answered the chief, sharply. "Why, Ivor, I did not know you were so much of a gossip."

The young man bit his lip and frowned.

"You mistake me, chief," he said, and once again his voice had a ring of antagonism in its tone, "and you misjudge me. My question was in some sort a warning, and put forth that you might dictate such an answer as best suits the interests of the Tsar and Chancellerie. There are those, chief, who do not hesitate to assert that Stevan Lallovich's murder was but an act of justice on the part of his repudiated wife; those, too, who have the ear of our Empress, and who are never weary of instilling dislike and distrust of the Chancellerie in her mind, and who insinuate that Count Mellikoff's mission has more to do with secret and treacherous intrigues against the Tsar, than with the finding of a fugitive woman. And when the Chancellerie is struck at, you best know for whom the blow is intended. This was my motive for my friendly inquiries regarding Count Mellikoff."

He finished with a slight bow, and stood looking full into Patouchki's face. For a moment the immobility of that sphinx-like countenance was broken up, a wave of dull-red blood rose slowly in the sallow cheeks, the black eyes flashed ominously, a sneer rested on the thin lips and repeated itself in the frown that gathered on his forehead. When he spoke his voice vibrated with greater distinctness and staccato emphasis than ever.

"There will always be fools, Ivor, as long as time endures; even in eternity we shall doubtless find similar spirits to vex our hard earned rest. If I have misjudged you, it is enough, I beg your pardon. That there are traitors on every side who can know so well as I, who hold my life not worth the price of a rush-light! To be accused wrongly forms the greater part of man's experience, but to know one's own rectitude is sufficient compensation. The Chancellerie is for the moment secure in the integrity of its members, I believe; though in this Petersburg of ours, who can say how long even our institution will stand, or who shall prove the first traitor to its system? Let it be known then, Ivor, that Count Mellikoff has at present reached America, and that he is working under our protection and our surveillance. Even he needs to tread warily, for not even he is free from our suspicion, or our watchful care. No one, Ivor, no one, in all our great machinery, but has his double, whose duty it is to report to us every action, word, or occupation. A traitor would find short mercy, he might think himself fortunate had he time for a pater or an ave, or a cry to our Lady of Kazan. I need say no more, your warning will be remembered and acted upon."

Ivor bowed again in silence and turned back to his desk, but before he reached it Patouchki stopped him.

"I shall not require you longer, Tolskoi," he said, in his usual quiet voice, "you had better get an hour or two of rest now; at twelve I shall desire your attendance with me upon the Emperor and Empress, who will make at that time a private visit of inspection to Petropavlovsk. Meet me at the private entrance of the Palace, and now S'Bogorn: not understood."

"I will be there, chief," replied Ivor, promptly, a little smile creeping into his eyes and about the corners of his mouth. He drew on his heavy furred coat and stood for a moment, holding his cap under his arm, as he pulled on his long gloves, glancing now and then at Patouchki, who had returned to his writing, and was apparently so engrossed with it as to be oblivious of Ivor's presence, and forgetful of Ivor's warning.

"Good morning, chief," said Tolskoi, again ignoring his elder's more solemn salutation, "and thank you."

But Patouchki replied only by a gesture of his hand, and the next moment the heavy door closed noiselessly on Ivor's retreating figure. As he ran lightly down the short flight of stone stairs, and stepped out into the brilliant sunshine, the smile deepened in his eyes and about his mouth, and became a short gay laugh, that rang out clear and joyfully, cutting the cold keen air like a bell, and causing an old woman creeping slowly on her weary way, to turn and bless his youth and good looks in Our Lady's name.

"Hé! but 'tis good to be young, monsieur, and beautiful. Saint Peter send you a fair lady-love, and a short shrift!"

Ivor laughed again, and tossed the old dame a small coin; but the mirth died on his lips as he passed beneath the shadow of the great fortress, and recalled the gruesome context of the blessing bestowed upon him. "A fair lady-love, and a short shrift!" What a ghastly conclusion! What had he or Olga to do with death and death's ceremonies? He made very sure of winning his fair lady, but to take account with death, now in the full vigour and strength of his youth, had not entered into his calculations. A plague on all old women—evil prophets!—let them look after their own souls; as for him, a long life and a merry one stretched before him.

Then he began to hum again the broken strain from the opera; and as he did so, his thoughts travelled far ahead, and were on the whole satisfactory. Vladimir Mellikoff well out of the way, suspicion raised against him, no matter how faint, and the Italian, Mattalini, to dog his footsteps—for Ivor knew the Italian was the one picked out to serve as the Count's double—what might not he, Ivor Tolskoi, accomplish? Was not the way opening clear and straight before him, with Olga—beautiful, proud Olga—as his prize? What could be more opportune than the chief's selection of him to act as aide during the Royal inspection of the fortress; for well Ivor knew that Olga Naundorff would accompany the Tsarina, and that of necessity she would fall to his escort, as they passed from casemate to corridor of the giant prison.

Ivor was a firm believer in propinquity, and here would be a rare occasion for him in the relaxation of the strict Court etiquette, that usually hedged Mdlle. Naundorff about with a thousand barriers, for on such ex-officio occasions it was well known that the Tsar and Tsarina appeared with only a strong guard, and one lady and gentleman of their suite.

The great chimes of the fortress cathedral were ringing out the mournful cadences of the liturgy—"Have mercy, O Lord"—which in Petersburg mark each quarter of the hour, as Ivor passed out of the Chancellerie. It was close on eight o'clock, and already the streets and promenades were showing signs of renewed life. The great doors of St. Isaac's stood open, and into the vast misty building the devout of both sexes were passing rapidly.

Ivor paused, went up the steps, and looked within. The lights on the altar at the far end gleamed like so many tiny stars, through the diaphanous incense clouds, that clung always about the holy of holies. The dull gold on the massive ornaments and in the frescoes shone out here and there, thrown into relief by the more sombre purples and blues of their surroundings.

Before a statue of the Virgin and Child a woman had thrown herself in the abandonment of grief and petition; two or three scarlet kaftans of the Imperial Guard gave a touch of vivid colour, and contrasted chromatically with the white alb and golden vestments of the officiating priest. The low monotonous voices of the congregation rose and sank, like the murmur of the ocean breaking on the sands, as they, wrapt in private devotions, made known their petitions in low undertones, and quite irresponsive of the priest's function; while he, standing at the high altar, offered up the sacrifice of the mass.

As Ivor gazed half spell-bound, and half disbelieving, the woman who knelt before the Virgin's statue got up and moved slowly towards the door. She had thrown back her long veil, and her face against its blackness stood out in cameo relief. As Tolskoi's glance fell upon it, he started violently, and put out one hand involuntarily, as though to bar her way. But the woman dropped her veil instantly, and pushing rudely by him, walked rapidly down the steps and across the promenade; disappearing from view even as Ivor, recovering from his amazement, turned to follow her.

"Good God!" he exclaimed, standing for a moment uncertain what to do, the look of horror still stamped upon his features, "as I am a living man, that was the face of Adèle Lamien, the murderer of Stevan Lallovich, and his repudiated wife!"

CHAPTER II.

"IT WAS NO DELUSION."

At twelve o'clock that day, just as the great fortress cathedral chimes rang out the hour, repeating again the melody taken from the Eastern liturgy, "How glorious is our Lord in Sion," Ivor Tolskoi reached the side-entrance of the Palace court-yard, and, passing between the saluting sentinels, made his way towards a small door in one side of the building, before which marched constantly two of the Imperial Guard, whose business it was to watch jealously all in-going or out-coming traffic, and who, fully armed as they were, presented a sufficiently terrifying appearance, even to the most peaceful-minded.

Before this door two open sleighs were standing, their magnificent black horses handsomely decked out in gold-plated harness, and each wearing a triangle of gold bells spanning its back, from which the slightest movement evoked a shower of tinkling notes that fell melodiously, one after the other, on the frost-bitten air, and were echoed back again by the high walls of the court-yard. Sumptuous rugs and wraps of the costliest furs were thrown across the velvet cushions, while the coachmen and footmen were wrapped in mink-skin capes and tall, conical-shaped hats.

A short distance ahead of the equipages a selected division of the Imperial body-guard sat immovable upon their splendid chargers, the scarlet of their kaftans contrasting finely with the glossy coats of their steeds and the dazzling snow that lay as a pall of innocence upon the great metropolis.

Ivor stopped only long enough to return the salute of the captain of the guard, and to exchange a good-morning with one or two of the others, who were all well known to him, and then, pressing quickly forward, entered the Palace by the small door, and made his way to an ante-chamber, where, as he expected, he found Patouchki already arrived.

The chief's face wore a somewhat troubled expression, which did not lessen as the young man, shutting the door securely behind him, came up hurriedly towards him, an answering look of anxiety upon his usually fresh, insouciant countenance. Patouchki also noticed that his face was very pale, and his eyes wore a restless, inquiring expression, which was enhanced by the stern set of his lips. He made no comment until standing close by Patouchki's side, when he said, abruptly, and almost commandingly:

"Did you not say that Vladimir Mellikoff had gone upon this mission to America to track and to arrest the cast-off wife of Stevan Lallovich, for whose murder the Chancellerie holds her responsible?"

Patouchki, for once taken off his guard, started at this unexpected address, and turning sharply round so that he faced Tolskoi, looked at him keenly before he answered. But Ivor never flinched nor faltered; his cold, light-blue eyes met the chief's black ones full as boldly as they had ever rested on Olga Naundorff's fair proud face, and something in their hard cruel light warned Patouchki that the question was no idle one, but that behind it lay some disturbance unknown at their morning meeting. He replied in his most repellent manner:

"You have forgotten, Ivor, it seems, that the Chancellerie never makes decisive affirmations in words. Among us it is unnecessary to name names or publish identities. Your own rather too vivid imagination has outrun itself, Ivor, and accredited to Count Mellikoff's absence in the United States a more sinister motive than could be found in the records of the Chancellerie. Murder and arrest are two ugly words and have an ugly sound to ears unaccustomed to them, especially when applied to a woman."

"Nevertheless, chief," answered Ivor, impatiently, the frown deepening on his brow, "though you may choose to call Count Mellikoff's mission by every name under heaven save the right one, you cannot disguise its true motive. The Chancellerie may wrap itself about with all possible or impossible plausibilities of expression, there are those who can read between the lines, and who follow its machinations. Let me beg of you, chief, by all the months of faithful service I have given you—and they are many now—to be frank with me in this. Much—you cannot know how much—depends upon your answer to my question. Can you not yet believe in my fidelity and trust to my loyalty? Have I proved myself so poor a Russian? Answer me this, I beg; is it to track and to find Stevan Lallovich's forsaken wife that Vladimir Mellikoff has gone to America? I will not press you further as to her share in the murder, or why you suppose her to have sought refuge there, if you will give me a frank yes or no to my question; only be quick, I entreat you, our very moments are numbered!"

Patouchki, who, during Tolskoi's impassioned address, had remained immovable, his eyes downcast, the lights and shadows on his strongly-marked face alone revealing his interest and irresolution, looked up as Ivor's voice dropped into silence, and again fixing his piercing black eyes on the young man's face, he replied slowly, and with a hesitancy that sat strangely on his usually assured manner:

"Your words are imperious, Ivor; but it is the imperiousness of youth, not arrogance, therefore I pass them by unrebuked. As to answering your question with a short yes or no, that is impossible. There are too many motives and too many interests mixed up in Count Vladimir's mission for me to give to you, or any one, so unequivocal a rejoinder. However, since I do believe in your honesty of purpose, Ivor, and trust your integrity of action, I will say this much, that one of Count Mellikoff's objects—the most important if you will have it so—was to seek and to find the woman who calls herself Count Stevan Lallovich's wife. What then?"

"Then he will never find her, chief," broke in Tolskoi, "and you and the Chancellerie are being tricked by him for your pains. Vladimir Mellikoff may have his own game to play, and his own ends to serve, but finding and securing Stevan Lallovich's pseudo wife will not be one of them."

He laughed slightly as he finished, and his voice grew scornful again at the mention of Mellikoff's name.

"What do you mean, Ivor?" exclaimed Patouchki, now thoroughly roused.

"What I say," returned Tolskoi, doggedly, "Vladimir Mellikoff is deceiving all of you when he pretends to be on the track of that wretched woman, and you, chief, are blinded by his specious words."

"Have a care, Ivor," cried Patouchki, sternly, "the Chancellerie can hold you accountable for those words. What proof have you of what you affirm?"

"The proof of my own eyes," replied Ivor, hotly, "I tell you, chief, Mellikoff is deceiving you for reasons of his own, for I, this very morning, since I parted with you, have stood face to face with Adèle Lamien, who calls herself Adèle Lallovich!"

"You, Ivor, impossible!" cried Patouchki, "you have seen her, and here in Petersburg, in broad daylight! And where?"

"As I stood within the door of St. Isaac's this morning," answered Tolskoi, "the mass was just begun, and she had been kneeling—prostrated I should say—before the statue of our Lady of Kazan. Something familiar in the lines of her figure struck me even then, and presently as the miserere bells rang the quarter, she arose and came towards me, her veil thrown back, the whiteness of her face and the distinctness of her features thrown out vividly against her black apparel. She passed me rapidly, pulling down her veil impetuously, as she fled out and down the steps before I could put out my hand to stop her, and when I reached the pavement she had disappeared. But I tell you, chief, as I hope to be saved at the hour of my death, it was the face of Adèle Lallovich into which I looked for that brief interval."

"Impossible!" again ejaculated Patouchki. "Impossible that she should be here, in Petersburg, and the Chancellerie remain ignorant of her arrival. She is a marked woman to all our emissaries, how could she come and go, without disguise even, and we remain in ignorance? No, no, my good Ivor, your eyes mislead you this time; with all her arrogant bravery Adèle Lamien knows better than to put her head in the lion's jaws, or herself in the power of the Chancellerie."

"I tell you I saw her," repeated Tolskoi, obstinately, "believe me or not, chief, I saw her, and no other."

"But my dear Ivor," began Patouchki, persuasively, when a groom of the chambers entered hurriedly, and bidding them make haste, as their Majesties were even then descending the staircase, cut short the chief's oratory, and caused both him and Tolskoi to hasten their footsteps towards the side door, which now stood open with footmen and lacqueys on either side, holding the fur robes, foot-muffs and wraps of the Imperial party.

As Ivor and Tolskoi emerged from the side corridor, the Tsarina reached the entrance and paused a moment for her attendants to clasp the magnificent cloak of sables about her slight figure. Very sweet and delicate, and somewhat sad was the face that looked out from the clinging furs, with a touch of the same melancholy that at times rests on her English sister's brow, and with more than a similitude of her gentleness and sympathy. As she crossed the threshold the slightest possible shrinking or timidity caused her to hesitate for one brief moment, then she took her place in the Royal equipage, and her face, as she turned it towards her husband, wore a brave courageous smile.

Poor Tsarina! though wrapped about on every side with all luxury, yet never to realise the happiness of confidence; never to feel secure, even in your strictest seclusion; never to know when the cruel bullet, sent with a fatally true aim, may end your tenure of greatness, and send you back to your magnificent palace, a heart-broken, lonely widow!

Behind the Empress came the Tsar, dressed, as was often his pleasure, in the scarlet kaftan of his own guard, and by which he signified his desire to remain incognito. Following him were Olga Naundorff and the Emperor's equerry, who, with Patouchki and Ivor, formed the Royal suite.

The Tsarina in passing had acknowledged Tolskoi's presence by a gracious recognition, which sent the young man's blood running hotly through his veins, flushing his face and brightening his eyes. Ivor was every inch an Imperialist, and he loved his gentle Tsarina Dagmar with a real and chivalrous devotion; the latent sadness in her eyes and the pathos of her smile touched the most responsive chords of his cold and selfish nature, and awoke in him the purest sentiment of his heart.

Olga had caught the Empress's friendly bow to Ivor, and she too relaxed somewhat the frigid demeanour she had evinced towards him, since their conversation regarding Count Mellikoff, and flashed upon him one of her most lovely smiles, as he put out his arm and almost lifted her to her place in the second sleigh. The Tsar and Tsarina drove alone in the foremost equipage, preceded and protected on either side by the guard, while in the second were seated Olga, the equerry, Patouchki, and Ivor.

The gates were flung wide apart, and thus, with the horses prancing, the bells ringing, to which the clanking swords made a monotonous echo, and the sun shining, the Royal party crossed the gay boulevard now thronged with people, and drew up at the grim and frowning archway of Peter's gloomy fortress.

CHAPTER III.

ST. PETER AND ST. PAUL.

Petropavlovsk is in itself a giant fastness, covering, as it does, three-quarters of a square mile, and divided into so many rambling corridors, barracks, ravelins, bastions, curtains, and store-houses, as to be for the most part unknown even to the officials who form its ménage, and who, having certain portions of the immense structure set apart for their duties, live out their lives without exploring, or being permitted to explore beyond their individual domains.

The boulevard and the canal intersect the building, and separate the citadel proper from what is known as the "crown work," which lies to the rear.

Dreary indeed is the outlook for the unfortunate political suspect who is hurried by night, blindfolded and closely guarded, into this living tomb. To him, hastened along through unfamiliar passages and by echoing walls, conveyed hither and thither through succeeding gates and vaulted corridors, no possible effort of memory, or mathematical calculation, can ever aid him to determine which one of the many courts, bastions, or redoubts is that selected for his incarceration.

Nor, indeed, will he ever know, for when at last the gendarmes halt, and he is allowed the use of his eyes, he finds himself in a small court-yard completely enclosed by high walls, above which only a limited sky line is visible. And where this court-yard is situated, to what bastion it appertains, whether it faces the river or lies back from it, what is its relation to the door of egress, or its connection with the other casemates of the prison, not the wildest conjecture can establish, or the keenest intuition demonstrate.

The part of the fortress, however, which the Tsar had selected for his inspection, was that known as the Trubetskoi bastion, one of the largest and most impregnable, projecting as it does well on to the river side, in the direction of the Bourse. The shape of this bastion resembles as much as possible a bishop's mitre, as worn by the Western Church; it is built, in two storeys of stone and brick, around a court-yard of its own, which extends beyond the building proper and terminates in high thick walls, that completely shut it out and in from all communication save that afforded by a narrow vaulted passage, always strongly guarded. The interior consists of two tiers of casemates, opening on to narrow corridors, two dark punishment cells, overseers' rooms, kitchen and soldiers' quarters. In the court-yard are a bath house and one or two stunted shrubs.

Nothing more gloomy and horrible can be imagined than imprisonment within one of these casemates, of which the Trubetskoi bastion boasts seventy-two, thirty-six on each tier. As they were originally designed for cannon they are considerably larger than an ordinary prison cell, but size is no mitigation of their horrors. Each casemate has a window, but it opens upon the baffling stone walls of the narrow outer court-yard, and is moreover set nine feet above the floor, in a deep arched recess, and guarded by heavy iron bars. The massive wooden door is equally disappointing, giving as it does on to the stone corridor that lies between the cells and inner court-yard; in the centre of each is a square aperture, which can be opened or closed at the will of the jailer, by a swinging panel, acting like a miniature portcullis, and which, when horizontal, serves as a shelf for the prisoner's food.

Directly above this panel is that horrible contrivance—more loathed and detested by the incarcerated wretch than any other of the diabolical arrangements—the "Judas" hagioscope or Squint, and which resembles a slit for letters more than anything else, with a nicely adjusted strip of wood that can be noiselessly raised or lowered from the outside, and through which the eyes of the guard can spy at any moment upon the occupant of the cell.

Only those who have tasted of this unending inevitable surveillance can appreciate its horrors. To be never free, never for one moment, whether in grief, or pain, or despair, from the espionage of unsympathetic eyes. To throw oneself upon one's knees before the image of Our Lady, with which each cell is supplied, to pour out all the woe and misery of one's breaking heart in the abandonment of desolation, and then, to hear the faint click of the revolving slide, and starting back, find the argus eyes of one's jailer peering through the detestable "Judas;" and to know the very words of supplication and invocation will be used against one to condemnation.

What wonder then that many who have entered Petropavlovsk bravely and with a good courage, believing their imprisonment to be but an affair of days, are never seen again, never emerge alive from its terrible dungeons; or lose mind and reason waiting for the day of deliverance that never comes?

No words can paint the growing horror and despair of a prisoner thus incarcerated. Day by day his terror expands and magnifies as hope dies in his heart, and the inexorable hand of Russia crushes out his very life.

Within the casemates there are, for furniture, an iron bedstead and table bolted into the wall, an iron oven of the commonest description, a stationary iron wash-hand basin and a statue of the Virgin, beneath which hangs a tin cup for catching the dripping moisture that exudes constantly from the stone walls.

On entering his cell for the first time, the poor victim is stripped of his clothes and given in exchange a loose blue linen dressing-gown, grey linen trousers and shirt, and a pair of soft noiseless list slippers. The guard, after making a minute personal examination, in search of some possible criminal matter, withdraws; the heavy door swings to with a dull echo, the bolts slip into the padlock, and the prisoner is left alone, in the midst of a stillness and silence like that of death.

Gloomy, forbidding, sombre, the walls and vaulted ceiling rise about and above him, the air is heavy and lifeless, the silence is profound; not even an echoing footstep in the corridor makes a welcome noise, for the guards creep about in felt slippers as noiseless and as muffled as his own. And thus the purgatory of his sentence begins; and who, save Almighty God, can say when it shall end! While hour by hour the chimes of the fortress-cathedral ring out their triumphant notes—a mockery of the poor soul in torment—or toll the miserere, that sounds a knell to all his hopes.

It was at the entrance to the Trubetskoi bastion that the Imperial party alighted. Extraordinary reports as to the violence and cruelty practised within the walls of Petropavlovsk had lately become so widely disseminated throughout Petersburg, mingled with such threats of summary justice to be shortly meted out to the officials by the hands of the enraged populace, and such sinister warnings of personal vengeance, that the press of all parties called upon the Tsar to prove himself Emperor in his own domains, by investigating and abolishing the scandals.

It was a time of grave anxiety; but he, listening to the counsels of those who had in past difficulties proved their loyalty and disinterestedness, yielded at last to their persuasions, and resolved to adopt the extreme measure of a personal inspection of the maligned fortress. The Empress, on hearing this decision, and who, despite her gentle looks and quiet manner, owned the courage and high spirit of her Danish ancestors, at once determined to accompany her husband.

The populace should see that their Tsar and Tsarina neither feared to trust themselves to the people, nor shrank from redressing wrong when brought before their notice, though indeed none knew better than she how purely perfunctory and ceremonious would be the inspection and its results.

The governor of Petropavlovsk and the lieutenant of the Trubetskoi bastion received the distinguished guests, and welcomed them with apparent relief and pleasure, throwing open the doors of the casemates one by one, and standing back deferentially, with more of sorrow than of anger on their official countenances; for was not theirs a sad example of unrequited and misjudged zeal, since even they could be regarded with suspicion and doubted in their humanity?

Most of the casemates were found to be unoccupied, and Patouchki, who walked beside the Emperor, never failed on each such occasion to draw his Imperial Highness's attention to the fact.

"I believe, sir," he said, as they entered the last of the lower range of cells, and found it like its predecessors, empty, swept, and garnished, "that one of the most formidable counts in the public indictment against Petropavlovsk, is the over-crowding of its cells, and their uncleanly condition. Your Majesty has now visited thirty-five of these casemates, the greater number of which have been found unoccupied, and all of them in perfect sanitary order. I think, sir, this answers that complaint."

The Tsar sighed, but made no reply. Perhaps he, like Patouchki, wished to make the best of everything and see only the brightest side; but even he could not still the premonitions of evil that arose thick and fast in his mind, as he comprehended the immensity and power of this Imperial prison house of Russia.

Of the few victims found in the cells none recognised the Royal party. They were for the most part political offenders from the interior provinces, who had never before been in Petersburg, and to whom the face of their new Tsar was not as yet sufficiently familiar to make recognition possible, especially as his dress differed in no respect from that of the officers accompanying him. Little did the poor victims imagine, as they were hurriedly changed, early that morning, from one part of the fortress to another, that it was to avoid any accidental recognition on the part of those, who, being the last to enter the prison, still retained memories of the outer world, and sentiments of Imperial justice—believing that their Tsar, once convinced of their innocent incarceration, would order their instant release—that this transfer was made. Any possible outbreak was to be avoided at all hazards, since any such émeute could not but end awkwardly for the Imperial inspectors, and disastrously for the officials.

Had these poor wretches but suspected that the tall, soldierly man, wearing a scarlet kaftan, without ribbon or order, and who looked gloomy and thoughtful beneath the military helmet, was their Tsar—their little father, the great Emperor of all the Russias—how they would have fallen at his feet, praying his interference; protesting their loyalty, and maintaining their innocence! Or had the faintest doubt crossed their minds, that the slight upright woman, clad in those closely-clinging, sombre robes, whose eyes looked so pitifully forth, and whose face was so wan and pale, might perchance be their Tsarina, what tears and sobs, what pleadings and supplications would have rent the air, as they kissed her hands, or grasped wildly at her garments!

But fate was against them; their opportunity came to them unsought, and they passed it by unknowing. How should they know, poor souls, to whom even a word of ordinary greeting from their jailers was denied, and to whom no echo of news ever penetrated, how should they know, that at the very moment, as they were praying passionately for some means of communication with their Emperor, he himself stood before them, and that had they but put out their hands they could have touched him?

It was the cruel irony of fate; the bitter obligation of destiny.

As the guards threw open the massive casemate doors in silence, most of the inmates did not so much as raise their heads or change their attitudes. Why should they? It was only another of those many interruptions in their day's vacuity, in which the jailer played the part of inspector with maddening sameness. What call had they to look more often on his hated face than was needful?

Scarce a word passed between the Tsar and Tsarina, or their suite; the pall of absolute silence which enfolds great Petropavlovsk in the dark mantle of submission, had descended also upon them, and so held them captive as to kill any outward expression of inward emotion. Sometimes it was the "Judas" only that was lifted, and then the Tsarina would turn away her eyes and refuse to look, standing apart with anxiety and sadness written on her pale face; and when this happened, Olga would separate herself from Ivor, and waiting silently by her Royal mistress, watch her every motion with the sympathy of comprehension.

And so the weary task dragged on its heavy chain; there remained but one more cell, and then this horrible nightmare of duty, this travesty of inspection, would be over, and they might hurry away from out this gloom and depression, and seek once more the brilliant sunshine, the gaily-thronged streets, where at least the grim spectres of despair and desperation, if they stalked among the careless mummers, were out-balanced by the laughter and jesting of the merry-makers.

At length they reached the last casemate of all, and as the door was unbolted and thrown open, the Emperor and Patouchki stepped across the threshold. Seated on the iron pallet, his arms thrown out across the table, was an old man, whose head was white with the snows of many winters. He neither moved nor spoke as those without came towards him; his hands were waxen in colour, nerveless, and attenuated; the blue dressing-gown hung loosely upon his emaciated form; his face was hidden on his arm. Something in the intense stillness and rigidity of the attitude, in the absolute rest that had fallen upon him, startled the beholders with a vague sense of fear.

At a word from the Tsar, Patouchki crossed the cell and laid his hand upon the bowed shoulders. A shudder passed over the form, followed by a long and weary sigh, and then the head was lifted, and two feverish, bright eyes gazed out of the hollow sockets. For a moment he looked at them bewildered, and then, with a sudden, thrilling cry, he flung himself forward and fell at the feet of the Tsar, exclaiming in broken, feeble tones:

"Blessed be God in Sion; He has heard my prayer! Blessed be our Lady of Kazan! It is the face of my Tsarawich I see once more; it is the face of my little father—my Tsar! Oh, my Emperor, I am Alexis—Alexis of Battenkoff. I am an old man of over four-score, who, for fifty long years, served your father—my Tsar Alexander—and who, after all that time of faithful love and devotion, have been left to rot in this terrible pest-house for two long weary years. Pardon me, little father, pardon me! I have done no wrong, believe me. I have never plotted against my sovereigns; I have loved them always, and served them to the extent of my poor abilities. I had no hand in that bloody murder; I was innocent of all participation in it. I would have given my life's blood to save my Emperor. Why should I seek his death! Pardon me, my little father, as your sire, whose soul sees me now, would have pardoned me!"

As the last words passed from his lips the old man sank back, his hands twitched convulsively, and he fell on the floor in a swoon. So sudden had been his movement forward and so rapid his utterance, neither the officials nor Patouchki had time to interpose, but the latter now stepped quickly forward, as the Tsar, with a gesture, motioned to him to approach, and after giving him some directions, speaking earnestly and decisively, turned abruptly and left the cell. Neither the Tsarina nor Olga Naundorff had entered this casemate, the Empress's tender heart had therefore been spared the harrowing scene.

As the Imperial party drove away from the terrible fortress, and the brilliant sunshine caught at the glittering harness and bright trappings of the guard, a cry arose on the boulevard: "It is the Tsar, and our Tsarina! Long live the little father! Long live the Tsar!" But neither God's sunshine, nor the loyal shouts of his people could bring back the colour to the Emperor's face, or banish the look of care and anxiety that rested so heavily upon it.

The next morning an Imperial pardon was sent to Petropavlovsk for Alexis Battenkoff, but it came too late. The weary spirit and sorely wounded heart were at rest in eternity; the old man's soul had passed beyond all earthly pardon, into the Almighty hands of justice and recompense.

CHAPTER IV.

SUSPICIONS.

For many days the Petersburg Imperial press rang the changes unceasingly on this last benignant and forgiving act of the Tsar's.

It called upon all malcontents and revolutionists to say, if in this pardon were not displayed the utmost leniency and mercy. For was it not well known that Alexis Battenkoff was taken almost red-handed at the assassination of the late Tsar? And, indeed, who but one familiar, through long habit and confidence, with the movements of the Emperor, could have supplied the knowledge which assured the grim success of the dastardly attack? Was not Alexis always to be found, under suspicious circumstances, consorting with the most pronounced of the Nihilist faction; and could he be there save for one purpose only? Could one touch pitch and not be defiled?

Where then, in modern history, could another such act of condonation be pointed out, as this by which the Tsar had pardoned a participator in his father's murder? Was not that answer sufficient to all the treacherous suggestions, the menacing innuendoes, that had been ripe and bursting for so long in Petersburg? Perhaps now the organs of the opposition would cease their importunate blating, since the Tsar's inspection of Petropavlovsk had resulted in such a redress of imaginary wrongs, as not even their wildest dreams could have supposed possible. And was not the hand of Almighty justice made plainly visible, in that Alexis of Battenkoff was not permitted to taste again of liberty, but was stricken by death before the news of the Tsar's generosity could reach him? Let those who would, read well the lesson thus openly delivered to them.

Paul Patouchki read the enthusiastic laudations and pious thanksgivings in the silence of his apartments in the Chancellerie, and, as he did so, a slow, inscrutable smile crept over his face and lingered there.

It was not often that the chief recognised any direct interposition of Divine Providence in the political turmoils of Russia; indeed, in his own heart, he scoffed at all such superstitions, and acknowledged frankly that the Imperial Government neither desired, nor would appreciate, any such interference with its autocratic despotism.

But certainly, for once, he saw in the Battenkoff incident and death a most opportune intervention, whether Divine or otherwise, since by it the hands of the Imperial party could be strengthened, and for a time, at least, their policy be freed from too suspicious and too true aspersions. To his mind, like the last of the Stuart Pretenders, nothing in life so well became poor Alexis of Battenkoff as his leaving it, how and when he did. It was the one touch needful to stamp the Imperial inspection of Petropavlovsk with triumphant success, and to prove a satisfying sop even to so hydra-mouthed a Cerberus as the disaffected party; and therefore he was thankful, though none knew better than he that no actual improvement had been effected, no evils redressed, no reforms instituted in the governmental department of Petropavlovsk. The giant fortress closed its jaws just as tyrannically upon its victims, and abated not one jot or tittle of its iron-handed authority.

Patouchki, however, had too many anxieties pressing upon him to spend over much time in complaisant reading of political trumpet notes; he laid aside the Petersburg Messenger and turned toward his desk, on which lay a heavy correspondence not yet disposed of. As he sat down in his familiar place, the grim smile faded from his lips, to be replaced by a dark frown that knit together the black eyebrows, and accentuated the strong lines about the eyes and mouth. In truth, the chief was more concerned than he liked to admit, even to himself, at Ivor Tolskoi's news; and though at the time he endeavoured to treat it with cavalier disbelief, he nevertheless had an inner consciousness, of its truth, and a presentiment of complications to follow in consequence.

That Adèle Lamien should be in Petersburg, and the Chancellerie have neither warning of her intentions, nor knowledge of her presence, seemed, as he had said to Tolskoi, impossible; and yet, even as the word fell from his lips, he knew himself to be wrong, and Ivor to be right. The great spy system had failed for once, imperceptibly almost, and so far without damaging results, but it had, nevertheless, proved itself vulnerable, and had found its match in the quick wits and ready ingenuity of a woman. Even all the elaborate machinery of the Chancellerie had not been sufficient, when pitted against the devices of one weak, fugitive woman.

Yes, that was where the shoe pinched; to be duped by the very criminal they were pursuing, and to hear her laugh in their ears, as she slipped out of their fingers! And then, what a bad precedent was even this slight dereliction on the part of the Chancellerie; and how could the discipline of fear be kept up in the minds of the younger members of the great body, if such a defection became known? And the woman, Adèle Lamien, was brazen enough and clever enough, smarting as she was under her own wrongs, to circulate their blindness and failure, just where it would most redound to their discredit.

"It is impossible!" again muttered Patouchki, as his fingers rested idly on his desk, and his eyes wandered over the familiar trifles of his daily avocations. "It is impossible; and yet I know it is true. Some one of our emissaries has been asleep at his post, some one has connived at this woman's plotting, or been blind to her schemes, and deaf to her plans; some one, as at Balaklava, has blundered, and it remains for me to find the culprit, and to administer chastisement. A winter in Siberia, or in the Nartchinsk mines, will teach that some one the price of treachery, and the weight of the Chancellerie's wrath. Meantime the woman must be found and watched; the time is not ripe yet for her arrest, I must wait Vladimir Mellikoff's next report first; and by heaven, should he prove false, as Tolskoi would insinuate, he shall work out his retribution, side by side with the wretched victim of Count Stevan's licentiousness. But first of all, the woman must be found."

He drew a deep sigh, and with almost an expression of weariness took up one of the many despatches before him, and broke the seal.

Meantime, Ivor Tolskoi had prospered but slowly in his suit. Despite all his anticipations of numerous opportunities occurring during the inspection of the fortress, in which he should be able to command Olga's attention, and by deftly-turned compliment, or ingenious flattery, urge his pretensions, even as with subtle innuendo and covert sneer he touched upon Count Mellikoff's absence, and the character of his mission.

But Olga was more than indifferent, she was impatient with him; the influence of the time and place oppressed her peculiarly impressionable nature, as the sight of the pale sorrow on her Tsarina's face set vibrating the chords of her quick and passionate sympathy. She accorded Ivor but a half-hearted attention, scarcely hearing his soft pleadings, and while retaining unconsciously a memory of his insinuations against Vladimir, it was not until the Royal cortège turned down the gay boulevard that a full realisation of his meaning came to her. She turned then sharply to him, as he sat beside her, and, with her favourite imperious upward movement of her head, said abruptly, though in a low voice, inaudible to the other occupants of the sleigh:

"What is it, Ivor, you have been hinting to me all this morning, concerning my cousin Mellikoff? If you have news of him, why not give it me without so much useless circumambulation? I do not like mysteries."

"Mdlle. Naundorff has surely mistaken my meaning," answered Tolskoi, coolly, looking straight at her, and smiling a little. "I had no intention of insinuating anything detrimental of Count Vladimir; my remarks were but general, though to be sure any one is welcome to wear the cap, if it fits him."

"Les absents ont toujours tort," replied Olga, still impatient; "my cousin Mellikoff but shares the fate of all who have achieved even a limited greatness; jealousy and envy go hand in hand with those who, not so fortunate, only stand and look on."

Her words were sharp, and her manner pointed. Ivor knew both were intended to sting, and though he could not control the sudden wave of hot blood that dyed his face crimson, he could control his temper and his voice; he answered her, therefore, with another cold little laugh, as he said:

"Surely it is grace enough to be so defended by Mdlle. Naundorff? Even Count Vladimir could scarcely ask a greater favour, accustomed as he is to all devotion—where women are concerned."

"What do you mean?" exclaimed Olga, imperiously. "I insist, Ivor, on your explaining your very equivocal suggestions."

Tolskoi shrugged his shoulders, and replied under apparent protest:

"It is, I think, well known how successful Count Mellikoff has always been in any affaire du cœur, though such details are better suited for men's ears than for yours, mademoiselle. It can, however, be no detriment to him, even in your estimation, to acknowledge that his past is not written upon an absolutely white page, since you are the only one who has definitely subdued him, and bid fair to turn the brave Lothario into a Benedict. I have yet to meet the woman to whom the reputation of a certain kind of success in a man proves anything but a recommendation."

As Ivor finished, a silence of several moments fell between them. Olga turned her fair face from him and looked out, with unseeing eyes, upon the gay, moving pageant about her. Tolskoi watched her intently but furtively, and saw with inward satisfaction that his barb had gone home and was rankling, and would rankle for days to come, in her heart.

Well he knew Olga Naundorff's character, with its complex mingling of cruelty and softness; its nicely balanced elements of revenge and generosity; its preponderance of pride, its insatiable demand of absolute submission to her will, and its imperious arrogation of supremacy, not only over the present and future of her suitors, but over their past as well. Like her great ancestress, the Empress Catherine, her favours were tyrannies; and woe unto the luckless recipient of them should she find him faithless in the smallest degree! Even his past must be forgotten and forsworn; his existence could only begin with the bestowal of her first smile.

Without knowing it, a true and absolute belief in her cousin Vladimir Mellikoff's integrity had gradually grown up within her; she had come to regard him as the one faithfully sincere lover out of all her admirers, whose very sternness and power of repression spoke more eloquently to her than all the more emotional pleadings of her other suitors. She had believed herself to be the first and only woman on whom he had expended even the smallest measure of love; and to be the object of so unique and chivalrous a devotion, had not been the least among her reasons for yielding to his solicitations.

Ivor's insinuations, therefore, coming as they did, disturbed her more than she cared to realise, and awoke at once that latent suspicion and distrust that forms so pronounced a factor in the Russian character, and caused her to accept his words as positive and final evidence of Vladimir's perfidy and deceit. She never stopped to weigh his actions against Ivor's words; hers was not a nature of sufficiently generous tendencies to turn instinctively from ignominious slander; rather it leapt to conclusions, and from its own attributes pronounced its condemnatory sentence.

In her eyes Vladimir Mellikoff had been tried and sentenced, with Ivor Tolskoi as judge and jury. She could never trust him again, and she would endeavour by every means in her power to unravel his past; holding the threads of it in her slender hand until the hour should come when she could wound deepest, and play with most sinister effect the part of Atropos. What though she stabbed her own heart as well with the sharp scissors of fate? She must bear that, and hers would be the satisfaction of beholding her victim's misery first.

Meantime the Imperial procession flew swiftly along the boulevard, saluted on every side by the shouts of the populace, and the cries of the people: "Long live the Tsar! Long live our little father! Long live the Tsarina!" And the bells rang, and the sun shone, and all was gaiety, and mirth, and mocking optimism.

The crimson blush that had dyed Olga's cheeks so deeply, as the meaning of Ivor's last words became clear to her, had faded and left them colourless when she again turned to him, and her voice had an additional ring of hardness when she next spoke.

"My dear Ivor, we have, I think, always been sufficiently good friends for us not to doubt each other's sincerity of motive, even when we feel forced to speak upon subjects whose very nature precludes any possibility of agreeableness. I do not forget my very singular position in the world; alone as I am, though apparently protected by Imperial power, I owe obedience to no one in matters that concern myself alone. And it is because of this peculiar position that I am about to appeal to your friendship, or whatever sentiment does duty for that obsolete emotion, and beg you to be quite frank with me, and tell me all you can of Count Vladimir Mellikoff's past. Since, as rumour asserts, I am to become his wife, it certainly befits me to inform myself of his antecedents, in order that I may be a true and sustaining helpmate to him. Tell me, then, my dear Ivor, all you know, or all you will reveal concerning my cousin."

There was something so finely bitter and yet so commanding in her voice, and she had subdued her countenance to such an expression of simple friendliness, Tolskoi looked at her with genuine admiration during the half-moment that elapsed before he answered her. When he did reply, it was scarcely in the way she anticipated.

"Mdlle. Naundorff," he said, his cold, hard blue eyes studying her face intently, "you may remember that some weeks ago, when we spoke on this subject one evening at the Palace, you asked me a question, to which I gave you no answer. You asked me then what was my opinion as to the share of a certain woman—known as Count Stevan Lallovich's cast-off wife—in the murder of that same Count Stevan? I told you then I had no opinion upon the matter, and from that the conversation wandered to more personal matters. Mademoiselle, what I said then was not true. I had, and have, a very strong opinion as to the culprit, or culprits; but we will let that rest for the time being. Shall I continue? Are you interested sufficiently in this wretched woman's story to wish to hear more?"

She replied by a quick and decisive gesture of her hand, and an almost inaudible, "Yes."

Ivor smiled again, and drew the fur robe more closely about her, glancing keenly across towards Patouchki, who, however, was absorbed in conversation with the equerry and paid no attention to his companions; seeing which, Tolskoi continued:

"Mademoiselle, that woman is now in Petersburg, and I have seen her. This is probably not such a matter of surprise to you as it is to—some other people; but when I tell you that Count Mellikoff's hurried journey to America was undertaken ostensibly to track, to find, and to arrest that woman, and that his continuing there is for the same reason, you will understand why my meeting with her here is pregnant with such grave complications."

Olga was gazing at him earnestly, following his every word and gesture with her eyes; the violet iris had grown black and enlarged from suppressed excitement.

"I will not go into the details, mademoiselle," Ivor went on, "of that unfortunate woman's wrongs, or the succession of cruel circumstances that led up to the murder of Count Stevan. Doubtless, she had a share and part in that murder; but hers was not the only brain that conceived the crime, or the only hand that struck the blow. There was a stronger and more important power behind; one who knew the terrible risk that was run in slaying a member of the Imperial blood, no matter how slight the consanguinity, and who had private ends to serve in seeing Count Stevan removed for ever from Imperial favour; one who, though hesitating to become a murderer in deed, did not hesitate to use this half frenzied woman as his accomplice and tool. Hers, indeed, should be the hand to hold the knife and strike the blow, but guided by a far more powerful coadjutor."

Ivor stopped again, and again Olga motioned to him to continue, by the same quick movement of her hand.

"There was but one man in Petersburg, mademoiselle, who could boast of any apparent intimacy with Count Stevan Lallovich, and who, if any one at any time, might have been his confidant. That man was Vladimir Mellikoff."

Again he stopped, and Olga, without taking her eyes from his face, felt, as she gazed on its youthful freshness, a great and terrible wave of doubt and uncertainty rush up and over her, wrapping her round and round, and sweeping away all lesser sensations in this awful one of impending calamity; but such calamity as should break not only upon her, but on one whom she dared not name, and out of which she could see no lift of light or hope. Tolskoi's words had been too well chosen not to carry with them the significance he intended, and she felt their full force even as she realised their full meaning. She drew her tongue across her lips, and tried to smile in answer to the cold light in Ivor's blue eyes, but the effort was feeble and abortive.

"Have you any more to tell me?" she asked at last, in a voice that was almost a whisper; "if so, continue, I beg. I find the story very interesting, and—instructive."

Ivor replied by one of his coldest little laughs, and then resumed his narrative.

"You, mademoiselle, were not in Petersburg when the murder was committed, the Court being then at Gatschina, consequently you could not know how great was the excitement here, or how freely Count Mellikoff mingled his regrets and desires for summary justice to be meted out to the criminal, with the public expressions heard on every side. No one had known Count Stevan better than he; and no one had a better right to mourn his untimely fate. Unfortunately, Count Vladimir had not been in Petersburg during the night of the murder, nor indeed for a day or two before; consequently, he could throw no light upon Stevan Lallovich's movements at that time, and his regrets could only take the more passive form of words. You will see therefore, mademoiselle, why, when the Government discovered that Count Stevan's repudiated wife had fled the country—aided and abetted by some powerful political friends—and was heard of in America, it took prompt and decisive measures for her capture. And who could have been better chosen for this work than Count Mellikoff, since he had been Stevan Lallovich's best friend? I must remind you here, mademoiselle, that my confidences must be held secret between you and me; I am, as it is, overstepping my boundaries in speaking thus frankly of the Government's share in this business; but I do so deliberately, and am willing to bear the consequences."

"I shall be silent," replied Olga, simply, and Tolskoi continued:

"You know, mademoiselle, how and when Count Mellikoff started on this mission, though at the time of his departure you little suspected it was in the interests of a woman that he undertook so long a journey. You knew only that there was work to be done on behalf of the Government, and that he had been selected for that work. It is now two months since he left Russia; granting him all necessary time for easy travelling and stoppages, he must have reached the United States close on to a month ago, which would leave him this last month to lay his train, if not to find the woman. I have said, mademoiselle, that this woman calling herself Adèle Lallovich, was assisted through Russia, and over the frontier, by the influence of some strong political agent, one whose word and whose name carried the weight of coercion. Very well, this happened early in December; in January Count Vladimir leaves Petersburg, and reaches America early in February. A month goes by, and within the first week of March I meet Adèle Lallovich face to face here. Ah, I see you have followed my reasoning. The same powerful influence that got her out of Russia, when danger menaced her here, has now sent her back to Petersburg, where she is for the time being more secure from arrest than in the States. And the brain and the hand that have twice protected and saved her—a fugitive from justice—are the same brain and hand that planned and executed Count Stevan's murder, and that used her as their instrument. I think, mademoiselle, that Count Mellikoff will somewhat disappoint the expectations and shake the confidence of his Government, when he returns without any definite intelligence or any important information regarding the movements and condition of Adèle Lallovich."

Olga heard him throughout without word or sign, though not one detail of the terrible suspicion he so boldly advanced was lost upon her. Slowly but surely she followed his every gesture, his every sentence, never taking her eyes that had grown so strangely dark from his face. Every vestige of colour ebbed from her cheeks and lips, leaving her face white as alabaster beneath the dark furs of her close cap; a waving ripple of golden-lighted hair seemed the only sentient thing about her. She spoke at last, and her voice had a faint far-away echo in its whisper.

"What you would suggest, Ivor, is horrible, unnatural. What could be the motive for such a crime, and such a shielding of the criminal? If, as you say, it were possible for one brain to plot and plan it all, and another to fulfil it, still where would be the object, what would be the motive? I know whom it is you suspect, but his motive, Ivor, his motive?"

She bent forward eagerly, clasping her hands and looking into the very depths of his eyes. Ivor Tolskoi saw his advantage, and pressed it home. His opportunity had come, he was not one to lose it for lack of courage to deal one more swift sure blow. Meeting Olga's strained violet eyes with his, in which the steel-blue light flamed out, he said slowly and with distinct emphasis:

"Adèle Lamien, or Lallovich, is a rarely beautiful woman, Olga, and beauty such as hers is a dangerous attribute. Count Mellikoff is a worshipper of woman's loveliness, and the story goes that when Adèle Lamien became the wife of Stevan Lallovich, she cast off a former lover whose chains had begun to gall. Who that lover was, Olga, I leave to your imagination. But when Stevan Lallovich repudiated and threw aside the woman, and an Imperial ukase released him from his obligations, is it unlikely that she sought her former friend and protector, or that he, maddened by her beauty and her wrongs, determined to avenge them?

"That is the story, mademoiselle, and you now know why I swore to you that sooner than see you Vladimir Mellikoff's wife I would kill him with my own hand."

But Olga made no reply. Silent, impassive, stricken through and through, she sat with blanched face and tightly clasped hands; and the sun shone, and the bells rang, and the populace shouted: "Long live the Tsar! Long live our little father!" but she neither saw nor heard any of it. All her heart and soul were in revolt and turmoil; all she had trusted to had gone down before her eyes, she was shipwrecked upon an ocean of deception and despair.

Presently the shouts and cries grew fainter, and the horses slackened speed as they turned into the Palace gates and were drawn up sharply at the side entrance, out of which she had passed so long ago—was it months or years, or alas! only hours? Should she ever again know what it was to feel light-hearted and joyous? Would this terrible burden of knowledge ever be lifted from her heart?

Ivor Tolskoi sprang down even as the threshold was reached and put out his arm to help her; she barely touched it with her gloved hand, and passed by him with but one burning look from her haunted eyes. For days after, the light pressure of her fingers rested there like iron, and the misery of her glance accompanied him as that of a lost spirit.

CHAPTER V.

MIMI'S BIRTHDAY POSY.

George Newbold's birthday fell within the first week of May, and certainly no more ideal spring morning could have dawned than that which Esther had set apart to be especially celebrated in honour of her spouse.

Mr. Newbold should, indeed, for the fitness of things, have been a young and blooming maiden—rather than a man verging towards middle age, and more or less disillusionised—to correspond with the rare loveliness and freshness of creation, that sprang afresh to life as Aurora, with blushing finger-tips, drew back the curtains of the night, and ushered in the roseate dawn. Even as the surroundings belonged more to that "garden of fair delights," consecrated by the Egyptians to Daphne, into which naught but harmony and sensuous peace and pleasure was allowed to enter, rather than to

"This live, throbbing age,
That brawls, cheats, maddens, calculates, aspires,
And spends more passion, more heroic heat,
Between the mirrors of its drawing-rooms
Than Roland with his knights at Roncevalles."

But Nature is ever prodigal and unreasoning; she stops not to consider on whom to spend her largesse, she has no calculation in her giving, and she seeks no return, since, with her keen perceptiveness, she knows we mortals possess nothing of our own, no gift of jewel or of price, of intellect or of beauty, that can compare with the least of those benefits she pours with such lavish hand upon us.

Does not all creation join with the angelic choirs to hymn her praises? What song of mortal measure, sung by mortal tongue, can equal in strength and melody that heavenly canticle? Nay, let us stand rather with bowed head and reverent mien, lifting our hearts in silent ecstasy, thankful if we may so much as catch a distant echo of those "divine praises," borne to us maybe on the wings of the far west wind; or a reflection of the golden glory of that paradise, ensnared in the luminous fragility of a sunset cloud.

It is all we can hope for on this lower earth, and who of us dare count on ever realising the terrible sublimity, the awful purity, of "the beatific vision"?

It was very early in the morning when little Marianne came running down the broad terrace steps, and stood alone amidst the varied riches of Esther's flower garden. Her sunny hair was all unbound, and lay upon her shoulders and about her forehead, still damp from the morning's bath, glistening like threads of gold washed in a wavelet of sunshine. Her white frock glanced in and out against the tender background of early green foliage, as she ran from flower to flower, plucking here a blossom, and there a bud, studying each attentively before adding them to the bouquet in her hand, with the gravity of childhood, which invests every action with a separate importance.

And as she flew about rejoicing, as only children and animals can rejoice, in the mere pleasure of being, she sang from time to time the rhyming measure of a nursery song, which fell unheeded from her lips, and that had no sense or meaning, but sprang as spontaneously from her heart as did the song of the little brown thrush, who was pouring out his weight of thanksgiving, with such overwhelming rapture as to shake his very soul, and cause the quivering cat-kin on which he perched to bend and sway beneath its vibrations.

The windows of the Folly were still closed and curtained. Its inmates were as yet scarce turning on their couches of down, or realising that another day had begun for them, another day opened out full of sublime opportunities for good or evil. With the passing of another hour they would perforce be roused from their dreams by the inevitable early cup of tea, without which species of dram-drinking no woman of fashion can support the fatigues of her toilette, or the embarrassments of the morning post. But that is sixty minutes off yet—sixty long minutes—three thousand, six hundred seconds—and in the meantime, before the inevitable overtakes us, let us follow the preacher's advice and make the most of it. "Yet a little more sleep, and a little more slumber, a little more folding of the hands to sleep."

Time enough to take up the burden of living when that burden is ruthlessly thrust upon us, and we bow our shoulders with accustomed habit to receive its weight.

But little Marianne entertained no such pessimistic views; to her the joy of life was simply in the act of living, and its triumph in escaping from the tyranny of Sarah, and being absolutely free to tear her frock or rumple her golden hair without the visible personality of that Nemesis. Presently Trim, her beloved Skye terrier, came leaping out to her as fast as his very short legs and corpulent body would allow him to travel; and then began a series of romps in which it was difficult to say which took the most satisfaction—the dog or the child. Trim, however, was the first to give up and retire on his laurels, selecting a particularly green spot of turf beneath a lilac-tree in full bloom, and after solemnly turning round and round in an unsuccessful race with his own tail, settled himself comfortably thereon, and with the tip of his red tongue showing between his teeth, watched the child with a benign and patronising expression. Marianne, thus deserted, returned to her flower-gathering, apostrophising Trim as she did so.

"You are a lazy dog, Trim. I'm 'shamed of you! It's perfectly redic'lous your pretending to be tired; you can't be; it's only putting on shapes, just as Miss Dick says, and shapes isn't very nice manners in such a wee little doggie as you!"

Trim snapped at an intruding fly, and yawned for answer, then settled his nose on his paws and went to sleep, and Marianne, thus left companionless, grew a little weary of solitude.

"I guess I've got enough flowers now for Popsey's buffday," she said, regarding critically the glowing mass of blossoms held very tightly in her hot little hand. "I guess I'll go in and put 'em on his dressing-table, and cry 'boo' very loud in his ear. Then he'll have to get up!"

And fired with this most laudable device, Mimi trotted away very fast, without so much as a backward look at the recreant Trim. Little recked George Newbold of the awful fate in store for him at the hands, or rather in the shrill voice of his small daughter! But surely, could he have foreseen her advent in the character of a red Indian, he would have devoutly thanked chance for his timely delivery.

As Marianne tripped along, a dark shadow fell suddenly across her path and stopped her further advance. Pushing back the fringe of golden hair, that fell almost into her sapphire blue eyes, the child halted and looked up a little bewildered.

It was Vladimir Mellikoff who stood before her, looking very tall and dark against the brilliant green of the sun-swept lawn behind him. The child gazed up at him gravely and without speaking. This was not a familiar figure in her little world; she would have greeted Jack Howard, or Freddy Wylde, or even old Sir Piers Tracey with her accustomed quaint mingling of condescension and intimacy; but this tall, dark stranger, with his sombre face and deep black eyes, was unknown to her, and because unknown was not to be put on the same footing with her old companions.

However, Esther Newbold's small daughter was sufficiently a little worldling in training to recognise in this stranger one of "papa's men," as she called them, classifying all unknown masculine visitors under one head; she did not, therefore, run away, but stood quietly silent, her eyes raised frankly to his, and the sunlight turning to living gold each tendril of her fair hair.

Vladimir Mellikoff could be very gentle and winning to children; they touched that inner chord of tenderness that vibrated so passionately to Olga Naundorff's lightest word, and something in the fair child's face, with its deep blue eyes, recalled to him that other proud Russian face, with the violet eyes and scornful, curved lips. He bent down and spoke to Mimi in his softest voice.

"You are little Marianne, are you not?" he said.

"I am Marianne Newbold," replied the child, with grave directness.

"I wonder if you could say my name," continued Mellikoff, persuasively. "It is not so pretty as yours, but then I am a man, you see."

"Men's is never so pitty," remarked the child, didactically. "What is your name?"

"Vladimir," replied Count Mellikoff, gravely, and repeating each syllable distinctly: "Vla—di—mir. Do you think you can say it? Try."

But Marianne shook her golden mane in positive negation.

"I couldn't," she said, "not possibly. But I'll call you Mr. Val, if you like; it's pittier than your real name."

"Very well, then, Mr. Val it shall be," answered the Count, smiling broadly at the very English sobriquet bestowed upon him. "Who have you been gathering all those flowers for?"

"They's for my Popsey; it's his buffday. Do you know how old he is, Mr. Val? I guess he must be most a hundred."

To which Mr. Val replied with a laugh; but Marianne was no whit abashed.

"I think so," she went on, seating herself on a low garden bench that stood under a spreading ash-tree, and beginning to sort out the flowers as they lay upon her lap. "I think so, 'cause he's got so many grey hairs, more than I can count. When I was a little girl"—with great disdain—"I used to pull 'em out, till Sarah said ten new ones came to each old one's funeral. Then I asked Lammy the other day if she thought Popsey was nearly a hundred; but she only laughed. Does you know Lammy, Mr. Val?" she queried, abruptly.

"Oh, but that isn't a real name, you know," protested Vladimir, diplomatically; "that might be any creature's name—a dog's, or a cat's."

"Oh, no, it couldn't," cried the child, eagerly, "'cause it's a person's—a grown up's, you see. It isn't her very own, own name; but that's too long, so I just calls her Lammy."

"And what is her very own own name?" asked Mellikoff, idly, taking up a large white marguerite from Mimi's store, and carelessly stripping off its petals, his mind unconsciously repeating the old formula, "she loves me—she loves me not." The child's voice fell with startling distinctness across the morning stillness, and shattered Vladimir's sentiment with a straight, keen blow.

"Her very own name," said Marianne, slowly, and taking great pains with her syllables, "is Mademoiselle Lamien—Mademoiselle Adèle Lamien."

The stripped daisy-head fell from Count Mellikoff's fingers, and lay at his feet amidst its snow-flake petals unheeded. He started violently at this positive answer to his negligent question, and the blood rushed for one moment to his face. He, who was never known to show emotion even when confronting death, trembled now before the unconscious words of a little child. His dark eyes seemed to grow larger in their hollow settings, the fine veins about his temples throbbed visibly.

Mimi, however, was ignorant of the agitation she had awakened; her golden head was bent over her flowers, while with one little foot she kept off the repentant Trim, who, having awakened from his slumbers, was endeavouring with slavish abjection to reinstate himself in his little mistress's favour.

When Count Mellikoff next spoke, any one save a child would have noticed the forced lightness of his voice; as it was, even Mimi looked up surprised by the change in it.

"And is it, then, Mademoiselle Lamien—Adèle Lamien—that you call by the petit-nom of Lammy?" he asked.

"Yes," replied the child, a little startled and impressed by his manner. "Mumsey calls her Mam'zelle Lamien; but I don't—not always—I call her Lammy. Is you sorry? Why does your eyes look so black?"

"Do they look black, Marianne?" Mellikoff asked, stupidly; then recovering himself with a laugh, and returning to his old manner: "No, I am not sorry. Why should I be? I've never seen your Mademoiselle Lamien."

"She's gone away," answered the child, quickly. "She had to; she said she must, 'cause she and Miss Hildreth couldn't possibly be here together.' But when I asked Mumsey about it, she only said: 'Nonsense, and don't bother.'"

"And has she been a long time with you?" asked Vladimir, putting the question indifferently.

Mimi shook all her golden curls. "Not very long; she came on Sarah's buffday, and that isn't very long ago."

"But how long?" queried Mellikoff. "A month, a year, a week? Try and think, Mimi; was it one Sunday ago, or two, or three? You know when Sunday comes, don't you?"

"Yes," replied the child, "it's the day after Saturday, and I always have my best pudding for dinner. What's your best pudding, Mr. Val?"

But Mr. Val was spared answering this embarrassing question by the advent of Sarah, who bore down upon them, her cap-strings flying, and whisked Marianne off, in a whirlwind of yellow hair and white petticoats, before he could even protest. She waved one little hand to him as she tripped away, holding on to her flowers with the other, and Trim barking at her heels; then the terrace door closed upon them, and Vladimir was left alone.

Mechanically he stooped and picked up one of the stray blossoms that had fallen from Mimi's lap; he turned it idly in his fingers, looking at it with unseeing eyes, while his busy brain went on thinking, planning, scheming.

Was he wrong after all? Had she escaped him; nay, had she ever been here at all? Why had she gone away? When would she come back? How could he piece out his welcome a little longer at the Folly? Was he altogether wrong in his suspicions? Had the woman tricked him again; fighting him with his own weapons, had she out-matched him and escaped?

And thus, as he stood lost in his self-questionings—a sombre, dark figure in the glowing beauty and sunlight of the fair May morning, twisting the drooping flower round and round in his fingers, and the song of the birds echoing ceaselessly in his ears—a sudden light broke over the gloom of his countenance, a half-formed exclamation rose to his lips; he dropped the flower suddenly, and took a step forward.

"No, I am not wrong," he said, in answer to himself. "Let Adèle Lamien beware, or I may turn her own arms against her." Then he turned abruptly and walked towards the house; and only the sunshine, and the birds, and Mimi's faded blossoms remained.

CHAPTER VI.

"'TIS A SIREN."

And so the long golden morning hours rolled on, and the garden remained untenanted. The sweet spring flowers—than which none are more beautiful and fragrant, because so redolent of promise—wasted their perfume on the gentle breezes that swayed their yielding blossoms; the birds' song grew hushed and lapsed into silence as the repose of noontide settled down upon them.

The sun fell in straight, level rays that were warm with a foretaste of tropical heat; far away in the distance a faint silver line marked the sea's limits, across which now and then a white sail flashed and was gone. All nature lay hushed and stilled in that strange peace that comes at the day's meridian, when the only sounds are those of the under-world, the drowsy humming of an early humble-bee, the impatient buzzing of a giant-fly, the bu-bu of multitudinous insects, the chip-chip of the grasshopper, broken sharply across by the monotonous hammer of the woodpecker.

Within the Folly all the lower rooms were alike deserted, not a ripple of laughter or an echo of voices was to be heard; even the billiard hall was void, the men, in the absence of the feminine element, having taken themselves off to the stables, or down to the club-house, where lay the yachts moored in harbour, curtsying gracefully to each succeeding wavelet as it broke against the sharp outline of stem or stern.

But up in Mrs. Newbold's boudoir however, there were life and action enough and to spare, for here were gathered Esther and her women guests, while each pair of feminine lips were eager to contribute their share to the general conversation.

Patricia Hildreth lay full length upon a couch pulled close to the hearth, on which a fire of fragrant hemlock burned, in mockery of the open window and in defiance of the dancing sunbeams. Miss Hildreth was in all things luxurious, and revelled with almost barbaric delight in warmth of atmosphere and colour.

Her slight but perfect figure was wrapped in a long loose cashmere robe of softest azure, about which the dark bands of Russian sables swept in classic lines, nestling closely about the firm white throat with caressing touch, and falling back from the white arms and rounded wrists. In her hand she held a dainty vellum-bound book, a collection of sonnets much in vogue, and from which she read aloud at intervals some special jeu d'esprit.

At her feet, on a low, luxurious pile of cushions, sat Dick Darling, doing nothing, her hands clasped around her knees, her eyes feasting, in true hero-worship, on the face of her divinity.

Before a large Psyche-glass stood Baby Leonard, absorbed in a row of suggestive little porcelain pots, and breathlessly engaged in the exciting process of "making up" in daylight, à propos of the evening's requirements.

Esther was resting in a lounging-chair with Mimi on her lap, the golden curls falling about the pretty face bent down over a new picture-book; and at the open window, on a low ottoman, sat Miss James, her hands clasped idly upon her lap, her thin face pale and tired, her dark, restless eyes fixed intently upon Miss Hildreth. Something in the attitude bespoke mental depression and dread, that even the alert watching of eyes and mouth could not disguise.

Dick's glib tongue had been running on aimlessly from topic to topic, taking in a wide range of subjects, from the races at Jerome Park, to the coming international yacht contest for the America Cup; and though the remarks of her auditors were few and far between, Dick was perfectly contented and asked nothing better than to listen to the sound of her own voice.

She was interrupted before long, however, by Miss James's sharp and rather high voice addressing no one in particular:

"Dick is certainly a living personation of Tennyson's 'Brook,' isn't she? 'for men may come, and men may go, but she goes on for ever!'"

To which Dick, arrested in mid-career, retorted sharply: "I can't say that I see any men about anywhere, either coming or going. The wish must be first cousin to Rosalie's thought. Good gracious, Baby! how much more rouge do you mean to annex? You're blushing like a peony now, and one eyebrow is half a mile longer than the other. You make me think of Jack Howard's story of Miss Grantham, the American beauty of London, you know."

"No, we don't know," broke in Esther, languidly; "perhaps you'll be so good as to enlighten us."

"Town Optics cribbed it from him," continued Dick, once more in her element, "and positively quoted it as true. It appears some magnificent masher asked Cecilia Grantham if she didn't find her abnormally long eye-lashes rather inconvenient at times? To which Cis replied, smiling sweetly, 'Why, certainly; I am always obliged to have them borne in front of me when I go upstairs, for fear I shall trip upon them!' And will you believe me," went on Miss Darling, when the laugh evoked had died out, "that brainless masher has gone about ever since getting it off as a double extra specimen of American repartee, and all the time it never took place at all except in Jack Howard's budding intellect. I think Town Optics owes him one for that."

"I can cap your story by a better, Dick," retorted Esther, rousing herself and sitting up very straight, "and mine is absolutely true, for it happened to George's sister, when she was in London, oh, ever so long ago, before the war."

"Ancient history!" groaned Miss Darling, resignedly. "Drive ahead, Esther, only you are awfully behind the age."

"A story's a story, no matter when it happened," replied Mrs. Newbold, a little confused in her grammar, "and you are not obliged to listen, Dick."

"Oh, yes, but I shall," remarked that young person—"listen and remember, and get it off with effect as first-hand, at my next big spread. Go on, Esther, do, like a daisy."

"Well, you must know, my dears, that George's sister was a very pretty girl——"

"Oh!" interpolated Miss Darling, making tragic efforts to control her astonishment.

"Yes, very pretty," went on Esther, severely, "and when she was in London she was presented at Court, and went out a great deal, and that's when old Sir Piers first saw her and wanted to make her Lady Tracey."

"For her sins! I am sure there could be no other reason for such a punishment," again interjected Miss Darling, piously.

"Ah, but Sir Piers was a gay young baronet in those days," said Esther, with decision. "Any girl might have hesitated before she gave him his congé. However, that's neither here nor there. Margaret Newbold was a very great favourite; and one evening, at a big dinner party at a tremendously swell house, she was given a proportionately great grandee as a cavalier. This very high-bred personage began by staring at her, up and down and round and about, through his eye-glasses and over them; and when he found this was not in the least discomposing to the young woman, but that she talked on glibly to her left-hand neighbour, he gave a loud 'ahem!' and said, so that all the company might hear: 'Ah—miss—ah—I perceive, though you are an American, you speak English quite fluently—ah——' Margaret eyed him for a moment over the rim of her wine-glass, and then replied, with calm distinctness and an air of inward satisfaction: 'Well—yes—ah—Mr.—I do. You see, the missionary who converted our tribe was an Englishman, and he taught us the language.' Then she went on eating her fish, quite undisturbed by the shouts of laughter that went up at the expense of her unfortunate questioner."

"Served him right, too," cried Miss Darling, indignantly. "I never heard of anything so caddish. We might just as well ask, in an off-hand, jovial kind of a way, if it's because they have so many H's lying round loose, that they forget to pick 'em up and use 'em in the right places! And one might suppose so, you know, with reason, judging from some of the specimens we get over here."

"It's very trying," broke in Baby Leonard, plaintively; "I can't get both sides of my face to look alike, and this crème impératrice is so sticky! What shall I do?"

"Leave it all alone," cried Miss Darling, brusquely. "You can't improve on nature, Baby—it's no use! 'Bad's the best,' as my old mammy-nurse used to say. You won't make your eyes any the larger or prettier by painting them a distinct violet, and your mouth's a far better shape left to its own lines; you can't make a Cupid's bow out of it, try as you may."

"Only listen to Dick the virtuous!" laughed Esther. "She positively waxes eloquent on the shams of the hour, and is developing a soul above frivolities! We shall have her quoting Carlyle next; or, stay, I know what it will be. What's that sentimental couplet, Dick, tucked carefully away beneath your pot of 'cherry-lip,' in your new silver-mounted toilette des ongles? Is this the way it runs:

'Why send me to this little girl?
Sure such a gift were silly!
Can I add lustre to the pearl,
Or paint the gilded lily?'"

"Oh, Esther, you're a brute!" cried poor Dick, the tears actually in her eyes, her cheeks very red. "How could you? It's only—only some stupid little lines about a still more stupid joke. They don't mean me at all."

"And then, fancy Dick being compared to a pearl, and a lily—a painted lily!" exclaimed Miss James, in her most disagreeable voice, and with a slow smile creeping over her face.

"Oh, Esther, how could you!" cried poor Dick again; but Mrs. Newbold only laughed.

"Don't be cynical and fault-finding, then, my dear Dick," she said, quietly, drawing one of Mimi's golden curls through her fingers; "it doesn't suit you, my dear, nor your little round, brown, winsome face."

"Since poetry seems to be the order of the day, listen to this," broke in Miss Hildreth, in her clear musical voice, and lifting her eyes from the tiny vellum book she held:

"'Near my bed, there, hangs the picture jewels would not buy from me.
'Tis a siren, a brown siren,
Playing on a lute of amber by the margin of a sea.

"In the hushes of the midnight, when the heliotropes grow strong
With the dampness, I hear music—hear a quiet, plaintive song—
A most sad, melodious utterance, as of some immortal wrong.

"Like the pleading, oft repeated, of a soul that pleads in vain,
Of a damnèd soul repentant, that would fain be pure again!
And I lie awake and listen to the music of her pain.

"And whence comes this mournful music? Whence, unless it chance to be
From the siren, the brown siren,
Playing on her lute of amber by the margin of a sea?'"

Silence fell upon the little group as Patricia's voice died away. For a moment all were held by the spell of the poet's words, with their deep undernote of passionate protest. The present faded out of the line of mental vision, replaced by the past, within whose mystery of silence, somewhere a great wrong lay hidden, and unappeased.

Had the poet known of it, in all its details, and kept inviolate this secret of another's existence, or had he only guessed at its outlines, fearing to fill in the lights and shadows, lest imagination should fall short of reality?

So vivid, indeed, was the impression produced, it seemed only a continuation of the tragedy when Miss Hildreth spoke again, slowly and without any apparent reason, save inward impulse.

"I have known one such woman once, to whom all life and all time was but the cry of 'a damnèd soul,' crying out ceaselessly against 'an immortal wrong.' Did our poet know her story, I wonder, when he wrote of his 'brown siren'? But no; this poor soul has had no one to sing out her wrongs, or open up the story of the treachery that blasted her life. Alone she has had to bear her burden, and alone she must bear it to the very end."

As Miss Hildreth spoke, Dick Darling crept close to her side, and knelt there, listening eagerly, with quick-coming breath, to the disjointed sentences. In the deep interest of the moment no one looked towards the window where sat Rosalie James, or noticed the intense nervous restraint she was exercising. Her face was absolutely colourless; her hands pressed so hard one upon the other that they left blue marks upon the soft flesh; her eyes were strained and feverish; she bent forward in an alert, expectant attitude, as of one awaiting, yet not certain of, some preconceived revelation. At the Psyche-mirror sat Baby Leonard, still placidly trying one artistic preparation after another, and totally oblivious to the tense atmosphere of suppressed excitement about her.

"And who was she? Is she alive?" asked Dick, her whisper catching up Miss Hildreth's falling inflection, and sustaining the interest of the moment. "Who was she? Is she alive? Where did you know her?"

"Yes, she is alive; oh, yes, indeed, she is alive," answered Patricia, still in a retrospective tone; "and I knew her in Petersburg when I was last there—such a little time ago, as it seems now."

"Was she beautiful?" Again it was Dick's voice that asked, and Patricia's that replied.

"She was very beautiful—so beautiful that no one could withstand her loveliness. And her beauty became her curse; ah, what a curse, since it attracted the attention of one so high above her that his lightest regard was an insult! What but bitter wrong and crime could be the outcome of a love proffered by a scion of the Imperial house to a woman of the people? Beauty is a grand leveller, it is true, but it cannot level the iron hand and cruel laws of Russia. It was the old story—the old, old, pitiful story—that comes to every woman once in her lifetime, and that each woman translates as best suits her desires—the story that makes a heaven upon earth, a paradise within our hearts."

Again the musical tones died away in a sigh of regret, and again Dick cried out in her quick, absorbed whisper:

"Is there any more to tell? What happened? What was the end?"

"What any woman might have looked for, save a woman blinded by love, and a man absorbed by passion. They lived in a fool's paradise for an all too brief space, and then, before the golden sheen had fallen from their vision, while the woman still played with fate and the man toyed with destiny, the blow fell—sudden, sharp, omnipotent, as is the nature of Russia's potency. Taken away from his very arms, her marriage annulled by Imperial ukase, her life ruined, her soul lost in a whirlwind of injustice and despair, what wonder that her woman's nature revolted, and that throwing aside the narrower swathing bands of law and conventionality, she stood forth, bold and free and savage, and struck down her craven lover in the very zenith of his manhood, with a hand that never faltered, as it drove home the steel to his very heart?"

Miss Hildreth had grown strangely excited as she told the tragic story; she rose up now and stood at her full height, the clinging cashmeres marking every line and curve of her beautiful form; her face was pale as death, and beneath her dark brows her eyes gleamed with their old dangerous fire; she lifted her hands and brought them together before her, throwing them out palm upwards in passionate protest; her voice was low and concentrated, vibrating with intolerance.

"And I who tell you this," she continued, "I speak as only one can who has looked upon such suffering as hers; who has beheld the soul drink to the very dregs of the cup of renunciation, despair, desertion; seen it touch the very heights and depths of mental anguish, and wandered with it so far in the paths of darkness that even crime seemed but justice, if it would in any way balance the debt of honour."

She faltered suddenly, and turning with quick impetuosity, sank back upon the couch, her light mocking laugh ringing out discordantly as she concluded.

"Was I not right, Dick? The poet must have known this story to write so tellingly of an 'immortal wrong, and of a soul repentant longing to be pure again.'"

Miss Darling had started back when Patricia had arisen, and though she remained kneeling, her eyes never left the other's face. Across the room, in the full warm glow of the noontide sun, Miss James sat shivering, but watching ever and always with the same look of expectancy, and yet of certainty, on her face.

As Miss Hildreth's little laugh struck so harshly across the compressed emotion of the moment, and made, as it were, a half-bar of discord in the tragic score, Dick Darling shuddered, and put out her hand, as though to ward off some impending danger.

"Don't," she cried, her brown face paling and flushing alternatively, "don't laugh in that dreadful way; oh, Miss Hildreth, it hurts me!" She crept a little nearer to her and laid one hand on the pale blue draperies. "That is not all, not all of the story, it cannot be all. Tell me the rest of it. Tell me her name!"

Dick's whisper was imperative, imperious, and Miss Hildreth, fingering nervously the vellum-covered volume, felt the force of the girl's candid eyes, and honest, earnest gaze.

"Her name"—she said, slowly and hesitatingly—"her name——"

But before she could complete her sentence Esther started up, putting Marianne hastily down, and came towards her.

"You have said quite enough," she exclaimed, excitedly. "Patty, Patty, let me beg you to be careful."