As I stood there, marveling at the stranger’s knowledge of my identity, I looked up, and beheld the face that had haunted my memory for weeks and shone like a pale flower out of the dark background of passion and intrigue. CHAPTER II. MADEMOISELLE’S GLOVE. SHE had just come out of the Cathedral of the Assumption, and was standing beside the proud old boyar, whom I supposed to be her father. Her veil had slipped aside, and once more I saw her features plainly, though this time she was oblivious of my presence. She was beautiful. There was no longer any doubt; before, I had thought that it might be half my fancy, half the dim light within the cathedral; but now, in the broad sunlight, I saw the regularity of her small features, the exquisite fairness of her complexion, the beautiful blue of her eyes. I saw too that she had been weeping, and was pale. My heart throbbed with a sudden mad impulse to offer her my sword, as her knight-errant. Fortunately, prudence and the common conventionalities of life kept me still, but I eagerly watched her every movement. Her hand rested half reluctantly, I thought, upon the arm of her escort, and she seemed to shrink away from the noise and rush of the crowd that was streaming past the cathedral, roaring and bellowing upon the way. The old boyar, her protector, glanced at them with complacent condescension, and from that moment I never doubted his adherence to the Naryshkins. I could see that he was measuring the extent of their success, gloating, perhaps, over the defeat of their opponents; there was something in the man’s face that suggested a keen relish for such a triumph. He was the personification of the old-time Russian boyar, the adherent of Precedence, the tyrant of the serf, the aggressive autocrat. He stood there, in the shadow of the cathedral, and viewed the Moscow rabble with the reflection of the patriarch’s triumph on his face. Such men as these would never make the Czarevitch Peter’s cause popular with the masses, never pacify the wounded sensibilities of the Dissenters, or heal the troubles of the Streltsi. The old noble was the picture of combativeness and aggression, and there was, too, a sinister expression in his eyes. His brows were intensely black in contrast to his gray hair, and instead of curving with the socket of the eye, they pointed suddenly up at the ends, like two horns, giving at once a Satanic aspect to the Tartar face, with its olive skin and its thin, pale lips.