Good old lady! She took Korynthia's gown for a ball-dress. In her day silk dresses, trimmed with the delicate lace Korynthia wore upon her dressing-gown, were only worn at court balls. The grandmother had not seen a fashion-book or interviewed a dressmaker for the past five-and-twenty years. So she thought it was a ball-dress. "I do not know how the tiara I have been keeping for you will suit that dress. Ihnasko, bring me my jewel-case." The old lady looked out the antique ornament set with pearls and brilliants, almost worth an earl's ransom, and was in sore perplexity how to place it upon Korynthia's giraffe-like mode of wearing her hair, not arranged to support it. Yet she must, at any price, see it worn. Korynthia suffered herself to be adorned. "Ah! now you are handsomer than ever! Wearing that tiara, you can well take her back to the Czar's ball, to be the envy of all." "No, grandmother, we are not going back," said Ivan. "If you will allow us we will stay with you and pass our Christmas evening here." "But what will the Czar say to that?" "He knows that we are here, and has given us permission to remain." "Oh, if you have his permission, that is quite another thing, and I shall be glad to have you here. But how can I amuse you? Can your wife play ombre?" "Oh yes." "But my cards I play with every day are soiled. I should be ashamed to bring them out." "My wife will see about getting a fresh pack. Give me permission to tell her where she will find some." "Of course, dear boy. Ihnasko, you meanwhile can be getting the card-table ready. Dear me! How long it is since I had a game of ombre! Never since the little dark duchess and the general's wife have been unable to mount the stairs. Then put out tea and cakes. Now some logs on the fire. We will see who will be the first to get sleepy when once we have warmed to our game. I know I shall not!" Meanwhile Ivan began speaking in French to his wife, constraining his face to wear as calm an expression as though he were merely explaining whereabouts in his room she would find the cards. "I am lost. The insurrection which has broken out to-day, and which, I believe, is already quelled, was secretly instigated by me. Prince Trubetzkoi was the _nominal_ Dictator; in reality it was I. I was the guiding hand, he only the mask. Trubetzkoi has already washed his hands of it; he has been to the commander-in-chief and taken the oath of allegiance to the Czar. This leaves me alone in the post of danger. The leadership falls upon me. Nor would I put it back upon his shoulders. The poor fellow has a young wife who is devotedly fond of him. That I have taken no part in to-day's revolt helps me not in the slightest, for, all the same, I was Dictator. If the papers connected with this movement are discovered I am irrevocably lost, and with me thousands of the highest in the land whose names are inscribed in a book we call 'the green book.' This book must be destroyed!"