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 coeur, 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.