to
admit that luck was a frequent element in success, and Corsini had
undoubtedly been lucky. A chance meeting with a discredited outlaw--so
much he had gathered from Golitzine in a brief conversation
to-day--had put the young Italian on the right track. All the same,
luck had a knack of presenting itself to people born to achieve
greatness. It presented itself to everybody, but the stupid people
were too blind to see and take advantage of it.

He remembered a word of warning that his old friend and patron, that
far-seeing statesman Lord Beaconsfield, had once addressed to him.
"Never associate yourself with unlucky people, my dear Salmoros." He
had faithfully regarded that warning during his strenuous years of
commercial and business intrigue.

The Baron had jestingly said yesterday that they would meet to-night
if that devil of a Zouroff left anybody alive. Well, they were all
alive, and the traitor Prince would soon be eating his heart out in
Siberia. And yet it had been touch and go. It had been a thrilling
day, and an ordinary man might have felt his nerves a little shaken
when the strain was over.

But Salmoros was as calm as if the destinies of the Russian Empire, in
which he took so keen an interest, had never hung for a moment in the
balance. Perhaps he had experienced and survived too many catastrophes
to feel very great emotion at another triumph, the last of a hundred
or more.

Corsini, on his side, with the jangling nerves of youth, was very
palpably agitated. His smile was forced, his face was twitching.
He could not dismiss from his mind these great events that had so
suddenly crowded into his life.

Nada, that peerless divinity whom he had adored from afar when there
seemed no hope, who had suddenly descended, as it were, to earth and
had promised to be his wife! Here was one intoxicating thought.

And then, last night the Emperor had called him into his private
cabinet, invested him with the title of Count of the Russian Empire
and promised him an even more substantial reward.

And yet he was the same man who, a short time ago, had been playing in
the streets for coppers which his half-starved sister collected. But
for the providential interference of dear old Papa Peron he might have
been playing there still, or sought refuge in an untimely grave.
Simply a turn of fortune's wheel.

Salmoros noted his agitation, and for a long time, did not press him
with any very direct conversation. He tal