A medium-sized man was Loris Baranoff, with a cold, hatchet-shaped face and grey eyes that in their keenness seemed capable of reading one’s thoughts. His appearing in any assembly—and all assemblies in St. Petersburg were open to him—was sufficient to send a thrill of uneasiness to the heart of any man or woman who in talking had been so rash as to touch, however remotely, upon State affairs. For Loris Baranoff was Chief of the Secret Police. “Let a man speak but three words,” said Richelieu, “and I will undertake to find treason in them.” Loris Baranoff would find treason if a man did not speak at all! He was reclining at his ease in an arm-chair by a bright fireside, his legs stretched out before him at full length, his hands clasped at the back of his head. Usually impassive in his bearing, he had at this time a light in his eyes that told of some inward excitement; at least, so the elder brother judged. “You have news, Loris?” said he, taking a seat that stood opposite. “Good news?” “News!” echoed the other with a sort of fierce exultation. “News! Ay! Dame Fortune is smiling on us at last.” “Time she did. She has dealt us some reverses of late. What happy discovery have you made?” “Let us dispose first of little matters before we come to the big,” said Loris, taking out a pocket-book and referring to some notes therein, written in a shorthand of his own. “First, my spy Izak the yamchik arrived this morning with your Englishman, Lord Courtenay.” “I am already aware of that.” “This afternoon Lord Courtenay happening to meet the Czar——” “I know the whole story; his refusal to kneel, his arrest, and his rescue by that marplot, Pauline de Vaucluse.” “Oh, so you know! Well, what’s to be done? for so long as he keeps where he is, the Czar himself cannot lay finger upon him.” “Let him abide. His arrest is but a question of time. You have the place under observation?” “Trust me for that! He can’t sneeze without my knowing it. Let him but take six steps outside the Embassy and he is a prisoner.—To return to our useful friend Izak. He timed his journey admirably, arriving at the Silver Birch on the very night and at the very hour appointed by you, without creating any suspicion apparently in the mind of Lord Courtenay.” “That, too, I know. Lord Courtenay has graciously obliged me by doing for nothing what I was willing to pay him three hundred thousand roubles for. So much the better for my pocket! Everything fell out precisely as I planned it. Thanks to Nadia the affair seems to have moved as smoothly as a piece of clockwork. Now, Grand Duchess Marie, proud and virtuous beauty, we will see how you look when you hear that your reputation is gone.” As Loris caught the vindictive sparkle of his brother’s eye he said— “You have never yet told me why you hate her so.” Arcadius hesitated, then said with a sneer— “The wisest man commits at the least one big error in his life-time. I committed mine when I made love to her.”