"You are very kind," Paul continued, "and I will be quite frank with you. I shall have to presume upon your good nature to ask your advice and help once more. To come to the point at once: Yesterday, here in your house, I told Mademoiselle Vseslavitch that I loved her. To-day she is gone,--where I do not know." Paul looked at his companion with appealing eyes. "My dear friend!" the Countess exclaimed, with truly feminine irrelevancy, "I am delighted. I would not be a woman if I were not always ready to enlist in the cause of a lover. And as for helping you, I would do anything for Sir Paul Verdayne which lay in my power. You want to find her at once?" she asked him. "Yes, Madame." "Then you are going to Russia--to-day, if I read your face rightly. Well, it is a long journey. I will tell you in two words where to find her--near Kieff. Go to that city; from there a ride of some fifty miles across country awaits you--to the Vseslavitch estate. Everyone in Kieff knows the place. You will have no great difficulty finding it--beyond the inevitable discomforts of travel in that corner of the world. But what are hardships to a man in love?" And she smiled at Paul in a manner so infectious that he already felt his spirits rising. "You are too kind, my dear lady!" he exclaimed. "You are a real fairy-god-mother. See, with your magic wand you have touched the mountain in my path--and it is gone. And now, god-mother," he said, almost gaily, "tell me--who is this beautiful lady?" "Ah! that you must learn from her own lips. Simply Mademoiselle Vseslavitch she must be to you until she wills it otherwise." She laughed as she read the sudden disappointment written on Paul's face. "You remember the old tale of the knight whose kiss transformed the beggar-maid into a king's daughter? Some such method I would suggest, perhaps." "But I've tried that already!" Paul almost said. But he caught himself in the nick of time. "How can I ever thank you enough?" he said as he rose to go. "You saw Mademoiselle yourself before she went?" he asked. "No. She left hurriedly this morning, very early, before my return. My maid told me that she had gone back to her home." With grateful words Paul made his adieu and hurried away. The door had scarcely closed behind him when a footman entered the morning-room. In his hand he carried a small tray--and on it there lay a letter. "A note which Mademoiselle Vseslavitch directed me to give you, Madame," he said. The Countess opened it. "DEAR LADY: "I am going home. Forgive my seeming rudeness. You know my moods too well, I think, not to understand that I have suddenly felt the call of the _steppe_. And I charge you, my old friend, as you love me, tell no one of my whereabouts. Ever your devoted "NATALIE." That was all. "This note, Francois--why was it not given me before?" she asked the footman sharply.