“To-day. We must watch till the prince and all the others are occupied in some distant part of the house. Perhaps there will be an opportunity before the rest come down--that might be our best chance.” But this last was not to be. After breakfast the prince excused himself, saying that he had some papers to which he was forced to give immediate consideration, and withdraw to his study, the very room Drexel and Sonya were to search. Moreover, Alice wanted her father to see something of the estate which was to be her main country seat, and since she had a headache and her mother felt disinclined to brave the cold, it fell upon Drexel to accompany Mr. Howard. Until two o’clock the pair of them, barricaded against the cold with layers of furs, and drawn by three swift blacks, flew across broad fields, through long, huddling villages, past forests of snow-shrouded pine and spruce and hemlock. Half an hour before the afternoon dinner Drexel and Sonya had another moment together in the embrasure of the window. After this interview Drexel went out to make a solitary inspection of the prince’s famous stable, asking them to excuse him, as he had nibbled rather generously after his drive and so was not hungry. Just before dinner was announced Sonya, pleading a slight indisposition, retired to her room. Minus these two, the company filed into the dining-room. They were midway in the first course when Drexel returned to the house, slipped quietly through the corridor that led to the library, and taking a book at hazard from the French section, settled himself in one of the leather chairs. A few minutes later Sonya entered. “That is the study there,” she said quickly, leading the way through a door opening off the library. They had decided there was no necessity for one to keep guard; the records were in French, as Sonya knew, and they could make double speed by searching together. In case anyone interrupted them, Sonya was to remark casually that Drexel was helping her look for a volume of genealogy. The study was distinctly a workroom. There were no vaults here, no heavily locked cupboards, no air of secrecy, for all the prince’s work was done upon the theory that the surest way to escape suspicion of harbouring a secret is to make a quiet show of having nothing to conceal. Shelves reaching to the ceiling were crowded with the government reports of a dozen nations, and with rows of semi-official files. It was frankly the room of such a man as Berloff appeared to be--a statesman without a post, an unofficial adviser to the Czar. “When here a week ago,” whispered Sonya, “I barely got into this room when I had to fly. So we’ll have to begin at the very beginning--on those files.” Scarcely breathing, their ears quickened for the faintest step, they set swiftly to work. The danger was great; discovery for Sonya, at least, would mean complete disaster.