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