"Stuff! Remember--'faint heart,' etc. She has been humbugged with lies about you. And I know the pride of all that race. You shall have her yet, if you show pluck; and you won't be like yourself, if you fail there. But you want to know who the dark enemy is, the one who is resolved to have Sûr Imar's life, as well as everything else that belongs to him. Very well, it is his own twin sister, Marva." "What! Marva, the widow of Rakhan, that rascally Prince of the Ossets, whom Imar very justly slew! So justly, that even he felt no compunction. Marva, who knew of her husband's falseness!" "That's the woman, and a nice specimen she is. I know one or two fine things about her, from what Hafer, her own son, let out. Ah, she is a deep one. It is a lucky thing for Imar that she sent Hafer, instead of coming to manage the whole affair herself." "You forget one thing, Captain Strogue," I interrupted, for this view of the Princess did not tally well with Sûr Imar's own account. "She pitied him, there can be no doubt about that, after his terrible calamity, though as yet she did not know the worst. She pitied him, and proved it by her distress at the death of his little boy Origen. And when a woman once lets pity in, there is no room for malice in her breast. I read that the other day, in a very great writer." "I don't know anything about that. I only know that she hates him. All the wreck of her life she ascribes to him, because he would not pay her portion. She has been brought up very differently from him, you must remember. And when she was so kind about that poor little devil, she had not the least idea that her husband that very day had fallen by the hand of Imar. Very likely she loved her husband all the more, without knowing it herself, for his behaviour to her. Some women do, there is no question about that; and there is queer morality in the Caucasus. She hates Imar, with all the power of her heart, which is anything but a weak one; and even if she loved him, she would be bound to kill him; for the blood-feud is between them." "You talk of it as if you were counting coppers; whereas it makes my blood run cold, cold and then hot, as if it boiled with a shudder." "Ah, but I have seen the world," said Strogue. "Very well, then tell me this. In the name of common-sense--if such a faculty is known among such brutes--why did not Hafer put a bullet or a dagger into Imar, as he has had fifty chances and more of doing, instead of taking a steady but unlucky pop at me? Explain that, Captain, if you can."