d, forcing herself to be light, "what one
may come to in old age. I saw a gray hair this morning. I am nearly
thirty-three, you know. When glamour goes, nerves come."

"Well, I suppose they do--especially in Russia, perhaps. There is a
glamour about Russia, and I mean to cultivate it rather than nerves.
There is a glamour about every thing--the broad streets, the Neva, the
snow, and the cold. Especially the people. It is always especially the
people, is it not?"

"It is the people, my dear young lady, that lend interest to the world."

"Paul took me out in a sleigh this morning," went on Maggie, in her
cheerful voice that knew no harm. "I liked every thing--the policemen in
their little boxes at the street corners, the officers in their fur
coats, the cabmen, every-body. There is something so mysterious about
them all. One can easily make up stories about every-body one meets in
Petersburg. It is so easy to think that they are not what they seem.
Paul, Etta, even you, Herr Steinmetz, may not be what you seem."

"Yes, that is so," answered Steinmetz, with a laugh.

"You may be a Nihilist," pursued Maggie. "You may have bombs concealed
up your sleeves; you may exchange mysterious passwords with people in
the streets; you may be much less innocent than you appear."

"All that may be so," he admitted.

"You may have a revolver in the pocket of your dress-coat," went on
Maggie, pointing to the voluminous garment with her fan.

His hand went to the pocket in question, and produced exactly what she
had suggested. He held out his hand with a small silver-mounted revolver
lying in the palm of it.

"Even that," he said, "may be so."

Maggie looked at it with a sudden curiosity, her bright eyes grave.

"Loaded?" she asked.

"Yes."

"Then I will not examine it. How curious! I wonder how near to the mark
I may have been in other ways."

"I wonder," said Steinmetz, looking at Etta. "And now tell us something
about the princess. What do you suspect her of?"

At this moment Paul came into the room, distinguished-looking and grave.

"Miss Delafield," pursued Steinmetz, turning to the new-comer, "is
telling us her suspicions about ourselves. I am already as good as
condemned to Siberia. She is now about to sit in judgment on the
princess."

Maggie laughed.

"Herr Steinmetz has pleaded guilty to the worst accusation," she said.
"On the other counts I leave him to his own conscience."

"Any thing but that," urged St