How I met this woman, how she came to talk confidentially with me, where I saw her and when, are not to be written just now. They could not be published without injuring a number of people, perhaps including Madame Virubova herself. I saw and talked with her soon after her release from the prison hospital. She was still a little drawn and haggard from the hardships and the terror of her experiences in Peter and Paul, and she was in the depth of despondency over the plight of her friend the Czarina. She is a very pretty woman, this alleged Borgia-Jezebel. She has an abundance of brown hair and her eyes are large and deeply blue. Her features are regular, and her mouth curves like a child’s. Two or three years ago the train on which she was traveling between Petrograd and Tsarskoe Selo was wrecked, some say purposely. Madame Virubova was desperately injured, both legs being broken and her spine wrenched. She was lamed for life and walks with a crutch, but in spite of that all her movements are singularly graceful. One of the stories about her is that she was a peasant girl brought to court by Rasputin and forced on the Empress as a convenient tool of the conspirators. This is quite untrue. Madame Virubova is a patrician by birth, and before she was born, and long before Rasputin appeared in Tsarskoe Selo, her family was attached to the court. The father and the grandfather of Madame Virubova were court officials, confidential secretaries to the emperors of their times. Both her parents are living and I have met them both. They are highly educated and unmistakably well bred. They are not rich people, but they live in a very beautiful apartment in an exclusive quarter of Petrograd.