licted as she is by her enemies--that an operation
was performed upon her in Italy while she was unconscious--you will
readily see in what deadly peril she is."

"What!" she cried. "Have her enemies actually done this? Horrible!"

"She will perhaps tell you of the strange romance that surrounds her--a
mystery which I have not yet been able to fathom. She is a Russian
subject, although she has been educated in England. Baron Oberg himself
is, I believe, her worst and most bitter enemy."

"Ah! the Strangler!" she exclaimed with a quick flash in her dark eyes.
"But his end is near. The Movement is active in Helsingfors. At any
moment now we may strike our blow for freedom."

She was an enthusiastic revolutionist, I could see, unsuspected,
however, by the police on account of her high position in Petersburg
society. It was she who, as I afterwards discovered, had furnished the
large sums of money to Kampf for the continuation of the revolutionary
propaganda, and indeed secretly devoted the greater part of her revenues
from her vast estates in Samara and Kazan to the Nihilist cause. Her
husband, himself an enthusiast of freedom, although of the high
nobility, had been killed by a fall from his horse six years before, and
since that time she had retired from society and lived there quietly,
making the revolutionary movement her sole occupation. The authorities
believed that her retirement was due to the painful loss she had
sustained, and had no suspicion that it was her money that enabled the
mysterious "Red Priest" to slowly but surely complete the plot for the
general uprising.

She compelled me to remove my coat, and tea was served by a Tartar
footman, whose family she explained had been serfs of the Zurloffs for
three centuries, and then Elma exchanged confidences with her by means
of paper and pencil.

"Who is this man Martin Woodroffe, of whom she speaks?" asked the
Princess presently, turning to me.

"I have met him twice--only twice," I replied, "and under strange
circumstances." Then, continuing, I told her something concerning the
incidents of the yacht _Lola_.

"He may be in love with her, and desires to force her into marriage,"
she suggested, expressing amazement at the curious narrative I had
related.

"I think not, for several reasons. One is because I know she holds some
secret concerning him, and another because he is engaged to an English
girl named Muriel Leithcourt."

"Leithcourt? Leithcourt?