ustache and made as though they had not noticed him. This was already
enough to foreshadow a brilliant career.

And indeed Count Kallash could not have passed unnoticed, even among a
thousand young men of his class. Tall and vigorous, wonderfully well
proportioned, he challenged comparison with Antinoues. His pale face,
tanned by the sun, had an expression almost of weariness. His high
forehead, with clustering black hair and sharply marked brows, bore
the impress of passionate feeling and turbulent thought strongly
repressed. It was difficult to define the color of his deep-set,
somewhat sunken eyes, which now flashed with southern fire, and were
now veiled, so that one seemed to be looking into an abyss. A slight
mustache and pointed beard partly concealed the ironical smile that
played on his passionate lips. The natural grace of good manners and
quiet but admirably cut clothes completed the young man's exterior,
behind which, in spite of all his reticence, could be divined a
haughty and exceptional nature. A more profound psychologist would
have seen in him an obstinately passionate, ungrateful nature, which
takes from others everything it desires, demanding it from them as a
right and without even a nod of acknowledgment. Such was Count
Nicholas Kallash.

A few days after the reception at Prince Shadursky's Baroness von
Doering was installed in a handsome apartment on Mokhovoi Street, at
which her "brother," Ian Karozitch, or, to give him his former name,
Bodlevski, was a frequent visitor. By a "lucky accident" he had met on
the day following the reception our old friend Sergei Antonovitch
Kovroff, the "captain of the Golden Band." Their recognition was
mutual, and, after a more or less faithful recital of the events of
the intervening years, they had entered into an offensive and
defensive alliance.

When Baroness von Doering was comfortably settled in her new quarters,
Sergei Antonovitch brought a visitor to Bodlevski: none other than the
Hungarian nobleman, Count Nicholas Kallash.

"_Gentlemen, you are strangers_; let me introduce you to each other,"
said Kovroff, presenting Count Kallash to Bodlevski.

"Very glad to know you," answered the Hungarian count, to Bodlevski's
astonishment in Russian; "very glad, indeed! I have several times had
the honor of hearing of you. Was it not you who had some trouble about
forged notes in Paris?"

"Oh, no! You are mistaken, dear count!" answered Bodlevski, with a
ple