are engaged," said Etta suddenly. She was picking the
withered flowers from her dress and throwing them carelessly on the
table.

Maggie was standing with her back to her, with her two hands on the
mantel-piece. She was about to turn round when she caught sight of her
own face in the mirror, and that which she saw there made her change her
intention.

"I am not surprised," she said, in an even voice, standing like a
statue. "I congratulate you. I think he is--nice."

"You also think he is too good for me," said Etta, with a little laugh.
There was something in that laugh--a ring of wounded vanity, the wounded
vanity of a bad woman who is in the presence of her superior.

"No!" answered Maggie slowly, tracing the veins of the marble across the
mantel-piece. "No--o, not that."

Etta looked up at her. It was rather singular that she did not ask what
Maggie did think. Perhaps she was afraid of a certain British honesty
which characterized the girl's thought and speech. Instead she rose and
indulged in a yawn which may have been counterfeit, but it was a good
counterfeit.

"Will you have a biscuit?" she said.

"No, thanks."

"Then shall we go to bed?"

"Yes."

CHAPTER IX

THE PRINCE

The village of Osterno, lying, or rather scrambling, along the banks of
the river Oster, is at no time an exhilarating spot. It is a large
village, numbering over nine hundred souls, as the board affixed to its
first house testifieth in incomprehensible Russian figures.

A "soul," be it known, is a different object in the land of the Czars to
that vague protoplasm about which our young persons think such mighty
thoughts, our old men write such famous big books. A soul is namely a
man--in Russia the women have not yet begun to seek their rights and
lose their privileges. A man is therefore a "soul" in Russia, and as
such enjoys the doubtful privilege of contributing to the land-tax and
to every other tax. In compensation for the first-named impost he is
apportioned his share of the common land of the village, and by the
cultivation of this ekes out an existence which would be valueless if he
were a teetotaller. It is melancholy to have to record this fact in the
pages of a respectable volume like the present; but facts--as the orator
who deals in fiction is ever ready to announce--facts cannot be ignored.
And any man who has lived in Russia, has dabbled in Russian humanity,
and noted the singular unattractiveness of Rus