Within an embrasure of one of the heavily-draped windows, the curtains of which had been pulled somewhat hastily apart, sat a youthful couple, who would in any assembly have stood boldly forth as being more beautiful and distinguished than is the usual type of humanity. Of these, one was a young man, the other a woman scarcely entering her second decade, but with so much of imperious grandeur and haughty pride of race about her that to call her by the less dignified title of girl or maiden would seem an impertinence. The young man was of more than ordinary proportions, tall and broad-shouldered, with a look of the innocence of childhood still clinging to the soft curves of his fair Northern face, that was revealed in his joyous azure-blue eyes, and reflected in the crisp golden curls which, despite the rigid cropping according to the last Paris mode, lay in tiny rings all over his round and well-shaped head. A close observer would perhaps have noted that his throat, though full and well developed, owned a straight and clean back line, denoting a lack of amative passion, and that the head and forehead were most developed where the phrenologists tell us to look for cruelty and perseverance. His hands were remarkably white, and kept in scrupulous order, even to the finely-rounded filbert nails that shone with the reflected sheen of a _polissoire_ and _poudre des ongles_. This was his only bit of cox-combry, however, and for the rest, it may be said, he had a hearty laugh, a merry jest, and a cheerful word for every one, and, while boasting more friends than any young patrician in Petersburg, yet admitted no one to a closer intimacy than that accorded by outward cordiality of manner. This was Ivor Tolskoi. We have seen him before, in the inner sanctum of the Chancellerie, when Vladimir Mellikoff accepted his mission; and Ivor cursed the fate that trembling in the balance, fell in the favour of the older and more experienced man, and thus shut him out from winning his first spurs in the service of his master.