"The baroness? How shall I tell you? She has been abroad for twenty years, and for the last two years she has lived here. In society she says she is a foreigner, but with me she is franker, and I know that she speaks Russian perfectly. She declares that her husband is somewhere in Germany, and that she lives here with her brother." "Who is the 'brother'?" asked the old princess curiously. "The deuce knows! He is also a bit shady. Oh, yes! Sergei Kovroff knows him; he told me something about their history; he came here with a forged passport, under the name of Vladislav Karozitch, but his real name is Kasimir Bodlevski." "Kasimir Bodlevski," muttered the old woman, knitting her brows. "Was he not once a lithographer or an engraver, or something of the sort?" "I think he was. I think Kovroff said something about it. He is a fine engraver still." "He was? Well, there you are!" and Princess Anna rose quickly from her seat. "It is she--it is Natasha! She used to tell me she had a sweetheart, a Polish hero, Bodlevski. And I think his name was Kasimir. She often got my permission to slip out to visit him; she said he worked for a lithographer, and always begged me to persuade mother to liberate her from serfdom, so that she could marry him." This unexpected discovery meant much to Kallash. Circumstances, hitherto slight and isolated, suddenly gained a new meaning, and were lit up in a way that made him almost certain of the truth. He now remembered that Kovroff had once told him of his first acquaintance with Bodlevski, when he came on the Pole at the Cave, arranging for a false passport; he remembered that Natasha had disappeared immediately before the death of the elder Princess Chechevinski, and he also remembered how, returning from the cemetery, he had been cruelly disappointed in his expectations when he had found in the strong box a sum very much smaller than he had always counted on, and with some foundation; and before him, with almost complete certainty, appeared the conclusion that the maid's disappearance was connected with the theft of his mother's money, and especially of the securities in his sister's name, and that all this was nothing but the doing of Natasha and her companion Bodlevski. "Very good! Perhaps this information will come in handy!" he said to himself, thinking over his future measures and plans. "Let us see--let us feel our way--perhaps it is really so! But I must go carefully and keep on my guard, and the whole thing is in my hands, dear baroness! We will spin a thread from you before all is over." XII THE BARONESS AT HOME Every Wednesday Baroness von Döring received her intimate friends. She did not care for rivals, and therefore ladies were not invited to these evenings. The intimate circle of the baroness consisted of our Knights of Industry and the "pigeons" of the bureaucracy, the world of finance, the aristocracy, which were the objects of the knights' desires.