They were faced by a stout, powerfully-built man with a full beard and moustache _a la_ Friedrich, Ulik von Kessner, High Chamberlain of Boravia.

Captain Alexis Vollmar was a typical Russian officer of the younger school, tall, well-set-up, and good-looking after the Muscovite fashion.

He had distinguished himself in the Far East, but just now he preferred the serene atmosphere of Boravia to the thunder-laden air of Holy Russia.
The talk was of hunting and war and politics and the chances of the Russian revolution, and on this latter subject it was perfectly unrestrained, for all knew that the Powers had made a secret compact by which they bound themselves, in the event of the fall of the Romanoff Dynasty and the Arch-Ducal oligarchy--which all Europe would be very glad to see the last of--to support Prince Zastrow as elective candidate for the vacant throne.
The Revolutionary leaders had been sounded on the subject, and were found strongly in favour of the scheme.

It meant a return to the ancient principle of elected monarchy, and Prince Zastrow, though now a German ruling prince, represented the union of two of the oldest and noblest families in Russia and Poland.

Moreover, he had pledged himself to a Constitution which, without going to Radical or Socialistic extremes, embodied all that the moderate and responsible adherents of the Revolutionary cause desired or considered suitable for the people in their present stage of political development--which, of course, meant everything that Oscar Oscarovitch did not want.
After dinner they went out through the long French windows on to a verandah which overlooked a vast sea of forest, lying dark and seemingly limitless under the fading daylight and the radiance of the brightening moon.