Baroness Orczy

“ The great cause that she revered and worshipped, to which she meant to dedicate her life, was about to be polluted by a crime so foul, so cowardly, that Maria Stefanowna's whole soul rose in rebellion, and imperiously demanded of her woman's wit to find a means of averting so terrible a catastrophe ”

“ When Dunajewski and his comrades had been arrested the girl's ears were filled with horrible tales of the tortures they would undergo, both whilst in prison at Moscow and afterwards during that weary tramp across the snowy desert, with horrible intervals of so-called rest in overcrowded, evil-smelling halting places; then the mercury mines, that in three years change the hale and hearty youth into an old man, palsied and imbecile. ”

“ Maria Stefanowna's position in the great Socialist brotherhood was a curious one. The only woman among so many men, she yet knew all their secrets and plans, and, though young, had often been of good counsel to them. ”