“Why should you not be more frank with me, my child?” the Princess wrote. “Surely you know that if in any way I could help you, it would be my delight to do so, and yet you leave me to receive through a stranger an appeal on your behalf. I had a visitor this morning in the shape of Madame Bourenine, whom you know by name as the confidante of the Empress. She said that she had come to talk to me about the love-affair of Nadia Mikhailovna, but she mentioned no other names. Nor did I, for I knew none. After some conversation leading to nothing in particular, she inquired at last whether, if the obstacles to your marriage could be removed, I should be willing to give it my sanction. Knowing only that you had felt it your duty to refuse your lover for some reason with which I was not acquainted, what could I say but that if you thought it right to marry him I should be delighted to help you in any way I could? After receiving this answer, she left me, apparently satisfied. But, my child, have I deserved to be treated in such a way? Why should Madame Bourenine know more of your affairs than I? I do not ask for your confidence if you feel it right to withhold it, but I pray you to understand that no one on earth can desire your happiness and your best good more than I. I commit you to God’s keeping, dear child.” After receiving this letter Nadia started on one of her mountain expeditions with her mind in a whirl. Who could the persons be that were interesting themselves in the state of affairs between her and Caerleon, and what was their motive for doing so? She puzzled herself with these questions in vain as she walked; but when she returned to the inn at a somewhat earlier hour than usual, she found that they were destined to a speedy solution. Entering the sitting-room, she was surprised to see a stranger talking to her parents,--a smooth and polished gentleman, with a highly waxed moustache. A conviction that she had seen him somewhere before came over her as she paused just inside the door; but she could not at the moment identify him with any one she knew. “And this is mademoiselle!” said the stranger, an almost imperceptible smile curling the ends of his moustache as he saw her standing erect and astonished in the doorway, with her plain tweed dress damp and muddy, and her hair blown about by the wind. “Yes, M. le Prince, it is my daughter,” said Madame O’Malachy, and Nadia noticed a repressed excitement in her manner. “Nadia, Vladimir Alexandrovitch has been so good as to pay us a visit here on his return journey from Czarigrad to Pavelsburg, entirely on your account.”