e, leaving an expression wonderfully different. Then all the
gray bitterness closed in again. "That would be quite impossible.--Why
man, consider! She herself refused me!"

"Nothing of the sort! This morning she was herself. To-night, she was
repeating to you her mother's thoughts. They coerced her.--Be a man, my
boy; and I'll help you! You two love each other; and you've got to
marry. Do you think you owe _her_ nothing?"

"Vladimir--Vladimir--you want to be kind to me. But you don't
understand. You didn't hear--how that woman--insulted my race; my blood;
yes--even her own sister, my mother!--You can't ask me to overlook
that--even--for--Nathalie!"

And Ivan's deep groan touched the heart of the man that heard it.

Nevertheless, de Windt had been struck by the sudden thought he had as
suddenly expressed. Marriage with her daughter, would certainly be as
sure a thrust as could be given to the proud woman who had so
causelessly hurt her nephew. After a time the friend pressed this view
upon his companion, till Ivan, in spite of himself, joined in the
working out of a strange idea: an idea of the seventeenth, rather than
the nineteenth, century; but possible, feasible, for all that. So, in
the end, young Gregoriev sought his bed that night not in black
depression, but with his brain once more on fire with hope:--hope of an
incredibly swift fulfilment of his lately despaired-of heart's desire.

This sudden frame of mind lasted for three days. And during that length
of time Ivan went cheerfully about his daily tasks, meantime, in company
with de Windt, working out the details of their secret plan. It was in
pursuit of one of these that, on the afternoon of the fourth day, Ivan
stood once again on the door-step of the Dravikine house.

Even in his nervousness Ivan noticed, as he waited, the unusual fact
that the shades of the drawing-room were all pulled down. And it seemed
to him, too, that there was about the house an air of unwonted
desolation, which, as the minutes passed, certainly became intensified
in his mind. Once more he sounded the huge knocker; and yet again: this
time so vigorously that the door shook. His sense of calamity had grown
till it was a presentiment. Yet his heart rose as, after a long five
minutes, there came the sounds of fumbling key and grating lock; and
then the door swung open before him, and he stood facing--not the trimly
liveried butler, but the gaunt and stooping figure of Ekaterina, the