and her companion Bodlevski.

"Very good! Perhaps this information will come in handy!" he said to
himself, thinking over his future measures and plans. "Let us see--let
us feel our way--perhaps it is really so! But I must go carefully and
keep on my guard, and the whole thing is in my hands, dear baroness!
We will spin a thread from you before all is over."


XII

THE BARONESS AT HOME


Every Wednesday Baroness von Döring received her intimate friends. She
did not care for rivals, and therefore ladies were not invited to
these evenings. The intimate circle of the baroness consisted of our
Knights of Industry and the "pigeons" of the bureaucracy, the world of
finance, the aristocracy, which were the objects of the knights'
desires.

It often happened, however, that the number of guests at these
intimate evenings went as high as fifty, and sometimes even more.

The baroness was passionately fond of games of chance, and always sat
down to the card table with enthusiasm. But as this was done
conspicuously, in sight of all her guests, the latter could not fail
to note that fortune obstinately turned away from the baroness. She
almost never won on the green cloth; sometimes Kovroff won, sometimes
Kallash, sometimes Karozitch, but with the slight difference that the