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&Y ORDER OF THE CZAR. 267

Countess Stravensky liked the privacy of the balconied room, away from the general staircases, with its picture- panels, and its tapestried vestibule. She had examined the place with Ferrari, and had found a doorway provided with great oaken shutters that completely isolated this portion of the palace ; and here the countess had set up a boudoir where she could be private at any time ; where she could read and write without the possibility of disturbance, and where, if she desired it, she could receive a guest in secret.

" You have done your work most excellently and com- pletely," said the countess, who had changed her proces- sional dress for an easy tea gown. " I thank you for your devotion, and applaud your taste."

Ferrari bowed his head and drew the curtain of the vestibule.

" It is all we could desire, you think so ? "

He showed her a little room inside the vestibule which might have been a dungeon, so thick and strong were its walls, so dim its light, and so generally gruesome its atmo- sphere.

" What tragedies have been done in this strange weird city of the sea," said Anna, as she looked into the room.

" Mere stage-plays compared with those of the Kremlin, the House of Preventive Detention, Schluusselberg, the Ravelin of Troubetzkoi, and the bagnios of Siberia."

" Yes," she replied. " Yes, and the mines ; but I was thinking just at that moment, Andrea, of romance. Last night I was reading Byron ; and this morning these Stories of the Bridge of Sighs."

She took up a new book as she spoke, but Ferrari only said :

" I am glad you entirely approve of all this," and as he said so his ferret eyes glanced from the window to the -vestibule, from the vestibule to the countess.