Thus the pent-up hate and bitterness of years of brooding upon
her wrongs broke forth. Taken aback, he quailed before it. His
jaw dropped foolishly, and he stared at her with wide, unblinking
eyes.

"The people will believe me, you say--they will believe that a
mother should know her own son. Then are your hours of usurpation
numbered."

If for a moment it appalled him, yet in the end, forewarned, he
was forearmed. It was foolish of her to let him look upon the
weapon with which she could destroy him. The result of it was
that she went back to her convent under close guard, and was
thereafter confined with greater rigour than hitherto.

Desperately Boris heard how the belief in Demetrius was gaining
ground in Russia with the people. The nobles might still be
sceptical, but Boris knew that he could not trust them, since
they had no cause to love him. He began perhaps to realize that
it is not good to rule by fear.

And then at last came Smirnoy Otrepiev back from Cracow, where he
had been sent by Basmanov to obtain with his own eyes confirmation
of the rumour which had reached the boyar on the score of the
pretender's real identity.

The rumour, he declared, was right. The false Demetrius was none
other than his own nephew, Grishka Otrepiev, who had once been a
monk, but, unfrocked, had embraced the Roman heresy, and had
abandoned himself to licentious ways. You realize now why Smirnoy