Looking out on the country in the flashes of lightning, Natalie's heart gave a little jump, for she recognized the high hedges between which they were running as those that lined the great highway to the west, which led to the chateau her cousin maintained, a day's journey distant from his shooting lodge near her own family estate. They were taking her there, then! And her heart sank at the thought. Nor was she wrong. For at last, after a cruel ride, in which they covered the journey in half the usual time, the steaming, panting horses were urged up a smooth road, which climbed in curves up the face of a steep hill. Then they came to a small plateau and stopped soon before a gate on which someone knocked loudly. Several fierce dogs began baying. Light began to show in the east now, and Natalie saw a man push open the massive gate. Then, in another minute, she was in the chateau. In a waiting-room, which projected over a vast cliff, Boris faced his captive. As he stood there a woman entered--the red-haired creature whom Boris had introduced to Paul as his sister. He beckoned her to draw near. "This," he said to Natalie, "is Madame Estelle. You see, I have provided a chaperone," he remarked with something like a sneer. Natalie looked coldly at the two, but said nothing. Madame Estelle flushed slightly under Natalie's scornful scrutiny as she led the way into an immense dining-room. To reach this room they had traversed a long passage, and Natalie appreciated the fact that the chateau was very curiously built. It consisted, indeed, of two portions, which were linked together by a long stone-flagged corridor. Boris helped himself liberally to neat brandy, while Madame Estelle sent for a servant and told him to order tea. Natalie had been filled with an intense foreboding as she entered the house, a foreboding which increased as she slowly recognized that she and Madame Estelle were apparently the only women in the place. For the tea was brought in by a man, not a farmhand or an honest countryman, but a villainous-looking individual with a pock-marked face and little gold earrings in the lobes of his frost-bitten ears. He walked with his feet wide apart, and with a slightly rolling gait. He had an immense bull neck, and the hands with which he grasped the tray were large, grimy and hairy. Natalie set him down as a sailor; nor was she wrong. When tea was over, Boris lit a cigarette, and drawing Madame Estelle on one side conversed with her for some time in whispers. At the end of the conference between the two the woman left the room without so much as a word to Natalie or even a glance in her direction. Boris turned round with a baleful light in his eyes. "Now, my lady," he said, "we can have this matter out." Natalie's afflictions had only increased her old habit of command and her natural dignity. Though in reality she was the prisoner, she might have been the captor.