In the sumptuous coach, the girl unburdened herself, but, with rare art or imperfect knowledge of her origin, she was more explicit on the family of her cousin than on her own.  However, it was his that had made a niche in art and scandalous story.

As for Kaiserina, her mother was the eldest daughter of a Count Dobronowska, of a Polish branch of the Vieradlers, who had settled in Fuiland.  The count had meddled with politics and the Czar had promptly confiscated his landed property.  The loss and fear of Siberia had broken his heart.  After his death, the widow passed the intervals of her grief in besieging persons of influence to obtain a restitution of the estate.  Unfortunately, she had no son to fight the battle with the Czar, but two daughters were growing up with such a superabundance of charm that they promised to be no mean allies in the enterprise.  But fortune did not altogether favor the widow; it is true that she interested a Russian of great wealth and political sway, but when the time came for his co-operation to be active, he played her a wicked trick.  He attracted her elder daughter to him and married her.  Not liking to have a mother-in-law in his mansion, he pensioned her off, with the proviso that her presence should never clash immediately with his own in any country.  It is regrettable to add that Wanda, Madame Godaloff, agreed to this arrangement, and, indeed, having attained woman’s goal, troubled herself not once about her parent who had schemed and plotted tirelessly for this end.  The countess had brought her deer to a pretty market; but, unhappily, she gained little by the bargain compared with what she had dreamed.

She had a brother-in-law who had acted very differently from her husband.  Instead of playing the patriot—­and the fool—­he had submitted to the tyrant and won a lucrative post at St. Petersburg.  He was afraid to injure himself by giving countenance to his brother’s relict, who was always seeking an audience of the Emperor.  It was strongly suspected that she intended, since Wanda was out of the lists, to throw the next daughter, Iza, at the head of a Grand-duke with whom the two girls had played when all three were children at Warsaw.

The countess seemed to have educated the girl, as soon as her elder was out of the way, for a royal match.  Like most Poles, Iza spoke several languages fluently, sang and played the harp and piano.  She was growing lovelier than her sister because she was a purer blonde, and yet Wanda had been accounted a miracle.  Remembering that, at a later period, a foreign adventuress almost inextricably ensnared one of the imperial family, the Countess Dobronowska’s matrimonial project was not so insane.  Some other pretender to the grand-ducal left or right hand thought it feasible, for everybody said that it was feminine jealousy that led to the countess and her “little beauty” being ordered out of the White Czar’s realm.  The pair, spurred on by the police of every