"What hand will kill the Grand Duke?" he asked, not once but many times, and invariably she answered:
"I do not know."
"On whose behalf does Boolba act?" asked the old man. "Think, Sophia Kensky! Who will give this foreigner twenty thousand roubles?"
"I do not know," she answered again.
Presently a note of distress was evident in her voice, and Israel Kensky rose up and took the box from her hand.
"You will go to bed, Sophia Kensky," he said slowly and deliberately, "and to-morrow morning, when you wake, you shall not remember anything that happened after you came into this house to-night. You shall not remember that I spoke to you or that I asked you to look in the little box. Do you understand?"
"Yes, Israel Kensky," she replied slowly, and walked with weary feet from the room.
Israel Kensky listened and heard her door click, then closed his own, and, sitting at a table, began to write quickly. He was still writing when the grey dawn showed in his windows at six o'clock. He blotted the last letter and addressed an envelope to "The Most Excellent and Illustrious Highness the Grand Duchess Irene Yaroslav," before, without
