One day in a Russian country-house a girl of sixteen was presented to three men—a prince, a baron, and a count, and as she greeted them with youthful enthusiasm and camaraderie she was quite unconscious of the fact that each of the three had asked her father for her hand.

In the land of the steppes, girls develop quickly, and although Marie was very young in years she was a fully-matured beauty, tall, with fine features, a beautiful complexion, a divine voice, and enough charm for half a dozen ordinary women.

No wonder the men were in love with her—she captured all hearts with her beautiful face and her musical voice—and when she had to be told of the proposals her father informed her that she could choose between the prince and the baron, for he disapproved of the count.

"I should love to be a princess," Marie cried romantically.

Old Count O'Rourke, a typical Russian nobleman, who was descended from an Irish soldier, was gratified.

"I am happy to hear you say so," he exclaimed, and kissed her.

A year later Marie eloped with the count, the one man of the three she had been warned against.

It was the beginning of a series of tragedies for the extraordinary girl, who became an even more extraordinary woman. Her father promptly closed his doors against her once she was the Countess Tarnowska. Marie declared that she did not care, adding that her husband was the most perfect lover in the world and she was the happiest wife that ever lived. But within six months she had changed her mind.

"God help me!" she murmured to a consoling friend. "I did not know there could be so much sorrow in the world." For in that short time she had discovered that Vassili Tarnowska was a libertine and that she was only one of many women he had professed to love.

From that moment Marie became a different creature. Always high-spirited and highly-strung, she only required a feeling of injustice to influence her to take to the path that leads to perdition.

Her husband neglected her, and she could not bear to be alone. Other men flocked round her and talked lyrically of her exquisite beauty. The neglected wife eagerly welcomed these compliments. Of course she and her husband, as members of the Russian aristocracy, had to maintain outwardly an appearance of perfect amity, but they were rapidly drifting apart, and tragedy was hovering over them all the time.

What would have happened had Marie found a strong and loving husband one can only conjecture. That she was born with a "kink" in her brain is evident. She has since confessed to that, and more than one specialist has recorded that she inherited disease as well as life from her parents and that she was not always responsible for her actions. But it has to be admitted that when she began to carve out a career for herself independently of her husband and children she permitted no scruple, no sense of honour, and no decency to interfere with her in her mad pursuit of pleasure.

The first of her victims was her husband's brother. Peter Tarnowska was a quiet, intellectual youth with a great reverence for womenfolk. He admired his sister-in-law, and was under the impression that Vassili was devoted to her. His amazement was, therefore, all the greater when, happening to call unexpectedly, he saw Marie with tear-stained eyes sitting in desolate loneliness. As a result of that interview Peter Tarnowska knew that he had found his ideal, but, of course, he was too late. She was another man's, and that man was his brother.

Vassili Tarnowska, who prided himself on his taste, was in the habit of haunting night restaurants with beauties of questionable antecedents, and he was presiding at a banquet in a restaurant in Kieff when he was startled to see his wife enter with a man. She was beautifully dressed, and she looked so happy that he thought her the loveliest woman there. The realization made him jealous, and Tarnowska, who did not want his wife until others showed their appreciation of her beauty and wit, now came back to her, and at once was the most jealous of husbands.

Had Marie been wise she would have seized the opportunity to atone for the past and make her future happiness certain. She had two pretty children, and Tarnowska was evidently determined to do his duty by them all, but the countess had already gone too far to wish to withdraw. She had lovers; here a doctor, there an officer of the Imperial Guard; and there was always a flattering number of candidates for the honour of escorting her to the theatre or restaurant. She was convinced that respectability was synonymous with dullness, and, accordingly, when the count expressed his penitence and desired a reconciliation he was too late. Marie had no room for him now in her overcrowded heart.

They lived together, of course, and entertained on the lavish scale which brought so many Russian families to poverty in the pre-revolution period. Marie was the most popular of hostesses, for she possessed that happy faculty of making each of her guests feel that the entertainment was got up solely in his or her honour.

Months of riotous pleasure passed. Vassili Tarnowska's jealousy became a mania. He suspected every man he saw in his home, and his wife's flippant and contemptuous answers to his questions exasperated him. The beauty found it impossible to forgive or forget the fact that the husband she had once considered the most chivalrous man in all the world had been the only male to neglect her for other women.

They were at breakfast one morning when Tarnowska was handed a telegram. Suddenly he leaned across the table and screamed a question to her.

"What have you been doing to my brother Peter?" he cried.

Marie could not speak.

"Read that," said the count, as he thrust the telegram into her shaking hand.

"Peter hanged himself last night." She read the message aloud in a voice that grated on him. "He was a foolish boy," she remarked indifferently. "I had forgotten his existence."

The tragic fate of Peter Tarnowska was still being talked about when Alexis Bozevsky became the lover of the countess. He was the type of man who looks and acts like the hero of a melodrama. He was tall, with a superb figure, a moustache that seems to have been irresistible, a bonhomie men and women were hypnotized by, and he was, undoubtedly, a past master in the art of pleasing romantically-minded ladies.

He penned a couple of letters to Marie, which won her for him, body and soul. She ran the most terrible risks on his behalf once she was in love with him, and the woman who was a queen amongst men now gladly became the slave of this handsome officer of the Imperial Guard. The story of their love is brief and tragic and very melodramatic. It is difficult to believe that it all happened so recently as 1907. The jealous husband, the handsome lover, the cigarette-smoking Russian countess with the beautiful face and dark eyes—all belong to the stage; yet the Tarnowskas and Alexis Bozevsky were real personages, and two of them are living to-day.

For some time Marie's latest conquest was unnoticed by her husband, who hoped that his brother's suicide would reform her. When he stumbled upon the truth he simultaneously resolved to kill Bozevsky in a duel. The first encounter between the jealous husband and the handsome lover took place in the house of the former. Tarnowska was armed, but he would not shoot a defenceless foe, and he flung on the table a revolver for his enemy.

"We will settle it here," he said, with the laugh of a madman.

Bozevsky was terrified by that laugh, and fled from the apartment to tell Marie what had happened. They agreed on a course of action, knowing that there was no room in the world for both the count and the officer, and they felt that they were helpless to avert the approaching tragedy.

A few days later Count Tarnowska, very pale and very self-possessed, entered the police station at Kieff.

"I have shot Alexis Bozevsky," he said calmly. "I found him dining with my wife at the Grand Hotel. I am your prisoner."

The astounded and agitated inspector did not detain him. Tarnowska was of too high a rank, and, besides, he suspected that the count was not quite right in his head. But Tarnowska had spoken the truth. Bozevsky was not dead, but he was dying, and Marie had left her home and had deserted her children in order to nurse him.

Bozevsky lingered for a few days, and Marie scarcely ever left his side. She knew that never again would she go back to her husband. The attack on Bozevsky outside the Grand Hotel precluded that. She spent hours praying for the recovery of the young officer whom she passionately loved, and often he would lie with a wan smile on his strained face whilst she pictured their happy future together. At these interviews Dr. Stahl, who was attending the wounded man, was always present. He was pale and weak-looking, obviously the victim of drugs, and Marie ignored him because she knew that he was in love with her too!

For Stahl had introduced Marie to the mysteries of drug-taking, to which she was now addicted. This accounts for a lot. At her trial she was described as a "human vampire," yet at times she had been the most devoted of mothers and the most generous of friends. But she lacked a brake to steady her when she began to descend, and she went from one wickedness to another until the final catastrophe.

When the young officer died Marie Tarnowska's heart died too. She could never love again, and she never did, but she could pretend to. In her desolation she rushed off into the country; she travelled and tried to forget. Her husband and her children were lost to her; she had been told that she would never be allowed to see them again. The sentence hardly affected her, for she could not think of anything or anybody now that the world was very lonely and her life empty.

Hitherto Marie Tarnowska had never known what it was to lack money. She had spent freely without any thought of the morrow. She had no idea of the value of money. In the past it had always been there for her to take. But now that her husband no longer acknowledged her existence her sources of supply were cut off, and it was the soulless proprietor of a second-rate hotel who drew her attention to the fact that even beautiful countesses must pay their way or suffer the humiliations attendant on poverty.

It was a bitter awakening. Marie Tarnowska became terrified. She could not earn her living; she must beg or borrow, or kill herself; and she had no desire to die.

She was walking to a telegraph office to send a message to her father explaining her position and imploring him to respond, when she heard her name pronounced by some one behind her. Turning, she recognized Donat Prilukoff, one of the wealthiest lawyers in Moscow. He had been a visitor at her house in the days of her glory, and Marie had been aware that he was in love with her.

Prilukoff was rich! Marie recollected that too! She had disliked him in the past, but she was poor now and beggars cannot be choosers.

"My dear friend," she murmured, and tears came into her fascinating eyes.

Prilukoff guessed how her affairs stood, and came to the rescue, but she could not forget her antipathy to the lawyer. A new passion had arisen in her, however, a passion for money, and henceforth she meant never to feel the want of it again, even if she had to pretend to love Prilukoff.

They became inseparable, the Moscow lawyer and the beautiful adventuress who had broken so many hearts and her own life.

"What has become of Dr. Stahl?" Marie asked shortly after their reunion.

Prilukoff laughed carelessly.

"He shot himself through the heart the other day," he said, in a callous tone. "They sent for me, and he died with your name on his lips, Marie."

She was "Marie" now to the man she had christened "The Scorpion" when she was rich and at the height of her popularity.

Prilukoff, middle-aged and unromantic-looking, was fiercely in love with the countess. At all their previous meetings he had been thrust into the background by the clever, handsome young men who had worshipped at Marie Tarnowska's shrine, but now he had her to himself. Every day she accepted money from him. Her creditors having discovered her address, presented their bills with unveiled threats.

Prilukoff saved the situation each time. He paid out thousands of pounds, and Marie Tarnowska hated him the more she was indebted to him. Had he ill-treated her she might have showered kisses on his feet, but he was recklessly generous, and she despised and hated him. She was that sort of woman.

It was necessary, of course, that they should move about, for it would have damaged Prilukoff's reputation as a sound family lawyer whom elderly ladies could trust with their investments if it was known that he was supplying a notorious woman with funds.

Marie gladly went to Italy, leaving the lawyer to attend to his business, but he was with her again within seventy-two hours.

"I cannot bear to let you out of my sight," he said. "The business must take care of itself."

"But what about money?" asked Marie nervously. It was all she thought of now. "I owe a thousand pounds to my dressmaker, and——"

Prilukoff produced a roll of notes.

"Don't be afraid," he said, "there is always plenty to be had."

She was completely in Prilukoff's power when she renewed her acquaintanceship with an old friend, Count Paul Kamarowsky, a colonel in the Russian Army, and a wealthy man. The count had just lost his wife, and he was endeavouring to escape from loneliness by wandering about Europe with his little daughter. Marie, therefore, came into his life again at a very critical time, and she had no difficulty in making him fall in love with her. He was ready to be tricked, and with Prilukoff's help she proceeded to swindle him.

Marie had had no intention of obtaining money from Kamarowsky until the Moscow lawyer had startled and terrified her by confessing that he was practically penniless. He had not only spent his means on her, but he had stolen over forty thousand pounds from his clients in order to satisfy her extravagant whims. When Marie, regarding him with horror, suggested that he should return to Moscow, he gripped her by the wrist.

"I've ruined myself for you," he cried hoarsely. "Once I was the most respected lawyer in Moscow, now I am a common thief, and if I return I shall be arrested. Marie, you must be mine. I love you. I have sacrificed everything for you. You must never desert me. If you do——"

She saw the threat in his eyes, but did not hear his words.

Events now followed one another in rapid succession. Prilukoff had to be careful to keep out of the way of the police, whilst Countess Tarnowska, who would have given anything to be rid of him, had to see him every day and discuss ways and means of obtaining supplies of hard cash.

Prilukoff, who discerned that Kamarowsky was in love with Marie, conceived a scheme by which they eventually extracted a large sum from him. Scarcely had the swindle been accomplished than Marie heard that her husband had divorced her. She was free to marry again, and she had already pledged her word to the swindling lawyer to take his name, but Count Paul Kamarowsky, rich, of noble family, and likely to make a devoted husband, was going to propose to her!

The count did so that very night, and Marie accepted him, extracting a promise that he would keep their engagement a secret. She was terrified lest Prilukoff should tell Paul that she was his, and so she played with the two men, keeping them apart and persuading each that he was the chosen bridegroom, though well aware that she was in the power of Prilukoff and that she dare not disobey him.

Marie was not in love. As I have said, her capacity for love had ceased to exist with the death of Alexis Bozevsky, but she wanted Kamarowsky's fortune, and she would obtain it only by conspiring with Donat Prilukoff, the dishonest lawyer, her master.

As though the situation was not sufficiently complicated, a third lover now came on the scene. This was Nicholas Naumoff, a youngster of twenty, the only son of the governor of Orel. Nicholas and Kamarowsky were devoted friends, and when the count introduced him to Marie he succumbed on the spot to the charmer.

With three lovers, one of whom held her in the hollow of his hand, Marie Tarnowska had a breathlessly exciting time. In the old days she would have enjoyed the situation, but now she hungered and thirsted for gold, and it was of money only that she thought whenever she asked herself what she should do.

The lawyer from Moscow haunted her. How she wished that he would die and leave her to marry the rich Count Kamarowsky, the man who could take her back into society and open the doors now closed to her! Marriage with Prilukoff would mean the perpetuation of her disgrace, and she would inevitably sink lower; yet she dare not move without his permission, and whenever he came to her she had to do his bidding.

It was a cruel trick of Fate's to put her in such a position. Countess Tarnowska, who had once driven men crazy by her capriciousness, the beauty who could pick and choose her lovers—and did so—was now at the beck and call of an ugly lawyer with an ugly record! She shed bitter tears, and was only comforted when Prilukoff whispered that there was a way of getting Kamarowsky's fortune and never knowing again the terrors of poverty.

Meanwhile, Paul Kamarowsky suggested that they should prepare for their wedding. Marie, who only dreamt of the time when she would be his, had to plead for a postponement, knowing that if she fixed the date Prilukoff would do something desperate. But despite her dislike for the lawyer she complained to him that Kamarowsky had not yet referred to financial matters.

Prilukoff, confident that Marie could not escape his clutches, propounded a plan whereby Kamarowsky was to be induced to make his will in her favour and also insure his life for £25,000 on her behalf. The trick was simplicity itself.

Prilukoff allowed Marie to dine with Kamarowsky in an hotel at Venice, where they were all staying, and in the middle of the dinner a waiter handed the woman a letter. Marie started and went crimson when she read it, and her companion, insisting on seeing what had disturbed his fiancÉe, read the note, which purported to have been written by a well-known Russian prince offering to settle his fortune on her and insure his life for £25,000 if only she would return to Russia and marry him. Prilukoff had, of course, written the letter, and Marie Tarnowska acted her part so realistically that the next day Kamarowsky's will and insurance on his life were facts, and she was heiress to both!

But once Kamarowsky had appointed the Russian beauty the sole inheritor of his property in the event of his death the conspirators wasted no time arranging for his murder. They both wanted his money badly. Marie, realizing that she could never marry him without Prilukoff's permission—a permission which would never be granted—entered into the conspiracy with a callousness and an abandon that were inhuman. She was only twenty-seven, but she could plot in cold blood to take the life of one who had been and was extremely generous to her.

Of course Marie herself would not do the deed, and Prilukoff, whose nerve had long since gone, was quite incapable of actually killing anyone. He could arrange the details and hand the knife or revolver to the selected assassin, but beyond that he could not go.

However, they were thorough and remorseless plotters. Kamarowsky was in their way. His death would make Marie a rich woman and Prilukoff a rich man, because then he could make her marry him. The count, therefore, must be removed. But who was to kill him? That was a question that was answered within a few hours by the arrival of Nicholas Naumoff.

The young man found Marie in her hotel at Venice, and there and then it flashed across her mind that he was the very person to kill Kamarowsky and at one stroke turn her poverty into riches, for Prilukoff having no more clients to rob, Kamarowsky must be murdered.

She was too clever, of course, to take him into her confidence, although Naumoff was so infatuated that he would have obeyed any command she was pleased to give him. But Marie Tarnowska had a wholesome fear of the law, and, whilst she was willing to consign her young friend to a living grave, she had not the slightest desire to experience the discomforts of a prison herself.

It turned out that Naumoff had called to ask her to marry him. His proposal inwardly amused Marie, for he was so young and she was so old—in experience. But she listened gravely to him, and when he had finished she kissed him on the forehead and whispered in a voice broken with sobs that she had prayed for this day and now that it had come she could not, dare not, aspire to happiness because a certain man stood between them and would prevent their marriage.

The ardent youth naturally demanded to know who it was who was driving her to madness. She answered under pressure that he was Count Paul Kamarowsky, Naumoff's dearest friend.

He was so surprised that he tried to persuade Marie that she was mistaken. Somehow Naumoff had not regarded Kamarowsky as an aspirant to her hand. He was so old compared with him, and love was, in his opinion, the prerogative of youth.

"Watch him," said Marie, who had been secretly engaged to the count for some months, "and you will be convinced that he persecutes me. I have to be polite to him, but, Nicholas, dear, I should be happy if I never saw him again."

Naumoff watched as bidden, and of course he saw Kamarowsky wait attentively on the woman to whom he was engaged. Quite innocent of the fact that he was giving cause for offence to his young friend, Kamarowsky seldom went out unaccompanied by Marie; and, when he was not looking and Nicholas was near her, she would make a little grimace of disgust to indicate that the count's presence was distasteful to her.

Naumoff, who had again proposed to Marie and been accepted, was nearly driven out of his mind by jealousy. He had pledged his word of honour not to reveal his engagement to Kamarowsky, who was also similarly placed by a promise to the beauty. Only Prilukoff, who remained in the background, knew the true state of affairs, and he was too worried by fear of the police to be able to enjoy the comedy.

But that comedy quickly developed into one of the most amazing tragedies of modern times, for Naumoff, hot-headed and irresponsible when under the influence of the Russian Delilah, decided to kill the man Marie described as her persecutor, the lover by whose death she stood to gain a fortune.

It was in the month of September, 1907, that the decision was come to. As soon as she heard it Marie found it convenient to take a trip to Vienna and wait there for the tragedy which would give her Kamarowsky's large fortune and enable her to collect £25,000 from the insurance companies. Prilukoff also vanished, having arranged to return to Marie when she had entered into her inheritance.

So that she might not be suspected of participation in the crime the woman wrote a letter to the Chief of Police at Venice, warning him that there was a feud between Nicholas Naumoff and Paul Kamarowsky and that in all probability they would have recourse to fire-arms. Acting on this letter the police watched Kamarowsky's apartments, and by a strange coincidence arrested a man who came from them at the moment Naumoff fired the shots which aroused the house. The prisoner, however, was released when it was seen he was not the person they wanted.

When Naumoff, mad with jealousy, called on Paul one morning, the count warmly welcomed him, though owing to the early hour he had to receive him in bed. But the moment he saw Naumoff's expression he guessed something was wrong. Before he could speak, however, the young man drew his revolver and fired two shots at close range into Kamarowsky's body. The injured man managed to rise to his feet and ask why his dearest friend had turned against him. Naumoff babbled out something about Marie Tarnowska, and the count understood.

"You have been fooled," he muttered, for he was rapidly losing blood. "Ah, there is some one on the stairs. Quick, I will help you to escape by the window. Some day you will understand. Nicholas, I—I loved you as a son. I never thought it would come to this. Quick—this way."

Kamarowsky actually assisted his murderer to escape, but Naumoff did not evade the police for long, and when he was locked in a cell he knew that not only had Countess Marie Tarnowska been arrested, but that Prilukoff, the swindler, was also in custody.

The count was taken at once to a hospital, and a famous surgeon stitched up his wounds.

"He will live," he said. "No vital part has been touched."

It seemed as though the Tarnowska tragedy was to end in a trial for attempted murder only, but Fate was relentless, for the chief surgeon who had pronounced Kamarowsky's life to be safe suddenly went mad in the hospital ward and ordered the stitches to be removed from the healing wound. A few hours afterwards Kamarowsky died in agony, and the last words of his delirium were a message of love for Marie, the woman who had planned his death and who had tricked his best friend into committing the crime.

The three accomplices spent over two years in prison before being arraigned, and the trial was a protracted affair in spite of the fullest confessions by the prisoners. Sensations were innumerable during the proceedings and there were many emotional scenes, and on May 20th, 1910, the Venice jury brought in a verdict of guilty, adding a rider to the effect that the countess and Naumoff were suffering from partial mental decay. Prilukoff was sentenced to ten years' solitary confinement; Marie Tarnowska to eight years' and four months' imprisonment, and Naumoff to three years and one month, the time already spent in gaol to be included.

As for Marie Tarnowska, the beauty who had ruined many lives, she went to her punishment as if in a trance. All her scheming, all her heartlessness and greed only brought her in the end to a convict's garb and years of unceasing and humiliating labour. And from the cell she passed to obscurity.