Mariána, who came from her room a moment later, was horrified, though she declared that she was too much upset to enter to view the murdered man’s corpse. Pale, nervous, and haggard, she whispered in French a wish to get away as quickly as possible, and so agitated did she become when I announced my intention of going on to Irkutsk, four hundred versts distant, to inform the police, that suspicions were at once aroused in my mind. I noticed, too, a deep scratch across her delicate wrist. How did she get it? Her actions were strange, and she was so anxious to get away from the scene of the crime that I at last became convinced of her guilt. My fair travelling companion was a murderess! We arrived in the Siberian city of Irkutsk one afternoon in December, and took tea at the post-house. Before we had finished our meal Mariána, who, though very pale, looked undeniably beautiful in a dress richly trimmed with otter, suddenly disappeared. “Has any one seen the lady who arrived with me?” I asked presently of the men who were warming themselves around the stove. “Yes,” replied a man who had just entered, and was shaking the snow from his sheepskin. “I saw her entering the Governor’s Palace.” Then he added, with a wink, “His Excellency has an eye for feminine beauty—he has.” I waited for no more. Struggling into my _shuba_, I crammed my cap on my head and hurried to the Palace, only a few hundred yards away. Of the sentry at the gate I learned that a lady had called upon his Excellency, and been admitted. After a short conversation with a flunkey, the man pocketed one hundred roubles as a bribe, and I was conducted through the great handsomely-furnished residence of the representative of the Tzar, and shown into a small anteroom, shut off from another apartment by heavy plush curtains. As I entered I heard voices in the adjoining room. “So you have come, my little one,” a man’s gruff voice exclaimed. “Yes—at last,” was the reply. The words were Mariána’s. Peeping through the curtains I found I could observe all that went on in the luxuriant gaudy apartment. Before the glowing fire a tall, elderly man, in the white uniform of the Imperial Guard, with his breast covered with orders, was standing; and near him Mariána, pale, erect and queenly.