"The attempt? What do you mean?" I asked. "It will all be explained in due course," he said, turning away to greet another member who at that moment arrived. In a few moments, Sonia, in a striking evening toilet, and wearing a magnificent diamond necklet, entered smiling, being greeted enthusiastically on every hand. We exchanged a few words, then, when every one was seated in silent expectancy, "The Sylph of the Terror" took up a position on the tiger's skin stretched before the hearth. The door having been closed, and precautions taken so that there should be no eavesdroppers at the windows that overlooked the flower-garden at the rear, in clear, distinct tones she addressed the assemblage in Russian as "Fellow-councillors of the Narodnaya Volya." She referred to the manifesto of the Narodnoe Pravo, and said, "Autocracy, after receiving its most vivid expression and impersonation in the reign of the present Tzar, has with irrefutable clearness proved its impotence to create such an order of things as should secure our country the fullest and most regular developments of all her spiritual and material forces." Then, with a fire of enthusiasm burning in her dark, flashing eyes, she referred to the thousands of political prisoners, many of them their own relatives and friends, who had been banished without trial to Siberia, to rot in the dreaded silver mines of Nerchinsk, or die of fever in the filthy _etapes_ of the Great Post Road. "Desperate cases require desperate remedies," she continued, glancing around her small audience. "Hundreds of our innocent comrades are at this moment being arrested in Warsaw, and hurried off to the Trans-Baikal without trial, merely because Gourko desires to curry favour with his Imperial master." "Shame!" they cried, with one accord. "He must die," ejaculated Fedor. "Shall we allow our brothers and our sisters to be snatched from us without raising a hand to save them?" she asked excitedly. "No. Long enough have we been idle. To-morrow, here, in London, we shall strike such a blow for the liberty of Russia that the world will be convulsed." "All is ready, sister," Fedor observed. "The arrangements for escape are perfect. By midnight to-morrow we shall have separated, and not even the bloodhounds of the Third Section will be able to trace us." "Then let us see the shell," she said. Walking over to a bookcase, he touched a spring, and part of one of the rows of books flew open, disclosing a secret cupboard behind. The backs of the books were imitations, concealing a spacious niche, from which the Nihilist drew forth a thick volume about seven inches long by five wide, bound in black cloth. It was an imitation of a popular edition of Charles Lamb's works. The bomb was in the form of a book! Sonia, into whose delicate hands he gave it, examined it critically, with a grim smile of satisfaction, then placed it carefully upon a little Moorish coffee-stool at her side.