gn from him, the old woman who was waiting on his wife's
divinity left the room, and the next moment he was lying like a slave at
the feet of his lovely young wife, who raised him up, and was pressing
him to her heaving bosom, when a noise which she had never heard before,
a wild howling, startled the loving woman in the midst of her highest
bliss.

"What was that?" she asked, trembling.

The Count went to the window without speaking, and she followed him,
with her arms round him, and looked half timidly, half curiously out
into the darkness, where large bright spots were moving about in pairs,
in the park at her feet.

"Are they will-o'-the-wisps?" she whispered.

"No, my child, they are wolves," the Count replied, fetching his
double-barreled gun, which he loaded, and went out on the snow-covered
balcony, while she drew the fur more closely over her bosom, and
followed him.

"Will you shoot?" the Count asked her in a whisper, and when she nodded,
he said: "Aim straight at the first pair of bright spots that you see;
they are the eyes of those amiable brutes."

Then he handed her the gun and pointed it for her.

"That is the way--are you pointing straight?"

"Yes."

"Then fire."

A flash, a report, which the echo from the hills repeats four times, and
two of the unpleasant-looking lights had vanished.

Then the Count fired, and by that time their people were all awake; they
drove away the wolves with torches and shouts, and laid the two large
animals, the spoils of a Polish wedding night, at the feet of their
young mistress.

And the days that followed resembled that night. The Count showed
himself the most attentive husband, as his wife's knight and slave, and
she felt quite at home in that dull castle; she rode, drove, smoked,
read French novels and beat her servants as well as any Polish Countess
could have done. In the course of a few years, she presented the Count
with two children, and although he appeared very happy at that, yet,
like most husbands, he grew continually cooler, more indolent, and
neglectful of her. From time to time he left the castle, to see after
his affairs in the capital, and the intervals between those journeys
became continually shorter. Faniska felt that her husband was tired of
her, and much as it grieved her, she did not let him notice it; she was
always the same.

But at last the Count remained away altogether; at first he used to
write, but at last the poor, weeping w