H. Bedford-Jones

“ With a burst of assumed joy, Boris fell to one knee and bent his lips to her hand, but at this she drew back.
“The old days are dead, my friend; the old rank is dead!” she said protestingly. “We who have survived the whirlwind are brothers and sisters in misfortune, no more. And the Princess Irene is dead, like the rest. I am Madame Ivanoff, whose family passed even before the great disaster, and whose life holds only the hope of doing a little good before the inevitable end comes to her as to all others. ”

“ They were not the Romanoffs, true; no less were they stricken humanity in distress, gentlewomen and princes hounded like beasts, tortured and driven into an exile that was as heaven after the hell that Russia now was.
Mrs. Ivanoff, that strong-souled woman who had been a princess, did not hesitate. She must give up a portion of her great plan; yet she could rescue these few and take them in comfort to America. Of the man before her she scarcely thought at all. ”

“ Ivanoff.
Ten minutes later Boris was gracefully bowing over that lady’s hand. He was a charmingly graceful man, was Boris—white teeth glinting under a smooth mustache, a swarthy face, a feline litheness in every movement, and the heart of a devil masquerading under the guise of a nobleman.
At the present moment Boris was the secret but accredited agent of Lenine, Trotzky & Co., a fact which would have given Mr. Shinski considerable alarm had he known it. Serge Shinski and his friends, Abe Gerin and Marie excepted, were mere rats who might prove deadly at a pinch ”