“Nadia,” he whispered, “take heart. How long I shall be in St. Petersburg, I know not; but when I return again this way I will redeem you and your father from serfdom—yes, if it cost me fifty thousand roubles.” He had thought to see her cheek colour with delight, her eyes to sparkle, and her lips to quiver with thankfulness; it was all the reward he wanted. But, to his surprise, her emotion took a very different shape. She shrank back, staring at him, her cheek as white as the dead; in her eyes a look of wild, haunting horror. “Isn’t that promise worth a kiss?” smiled Wilfrid. She did not give him one; instead, she presented her cheek, and on touching it with his lips he found it as cold as marble. Somewhat mortified by this strange reception of his offer, an offer made in all good faith, Wilfrid waved his hand to Boris, sprang into the sledge, and the next moment was speeding off along the frozen highway. Nadia staggered, rather than walked, to her own little sitting room. “What did the Anglisky say to you?” asked Boris, somewhat suspiciously. “Say?” gasped Nadia, who seemed scarcely able to speak for emotion—“words that he meant to be words of hope, but to me they are words of despair. I would rather he had stabbed me. And he looked at me, oh! so pityingly. My God! if he only knew the truth!” A shudder shook her from head to foot. Her wondering father repeated his question. “He promised to buy us our freedom, yours and mine.” “Glory to God!” cried Boris, clasping his hands fervently together. “Glory to God who has put this thought into the heart of the Englishman! My prayer for you, Nadia, my prayer day and night for years, is answered at last. He’ll keep his word, this Englishman. An Englishman always does. And he shall not lose by his goodness. I will work, work night and day, till I have paid him our ransom twice, yea, three times over. But, Nadia, Nadia, why do you grieve? Is this a thing to grieve about?” “The offer comes a day too late, my father.” “A day too late?” “We are already free,” she replied, with a laugh dreadful in its want of mirth. “Free by the grace of the nether fiend, who is now mocking me with a deed that need not have been done.” CHAPTER VI HEIRESS TO THE THRONE! On the fifth morning after leaving Gora, Wilfrid and his yamchik were speeding over a landscape that presented to the eye little more than a vast expanse of virgin white, sparkling beneath the rays of a pale, northern sun, that gave light, but not warmth. “St. Petersburg!” cried the yamchik suddenly, pointing with his whip to the far-off northern horizon, which, presenting hitherto a smooth line, began now to have its continuity broken by a series of irregularities.