I foreboded nothing good. This repeated excuse to my friends, and at the betrothal banquet above all things, and in such a cool tone,—what could it signify? The mail brought me the next morning an explanation of what it meant: a letter from the father,—only a few lines, with the tidings that the two men had gone to England. They had come to the painful decision that the engagement must be broken. The disparity of ages was too great, for the young man was—it had to be confessed—not twenty but only just eighteen. “Farewell, and may you be as happy as you deserve. Yours truly.”— And that was all! The whole fairy-tale dream blown away! Later we learned that all that row of houses in Melbourne, and the rest of the millions, were only figments of the imagination. Of course for a time I was hurt and humiliated on account of this episode. I felt that I had been made a mock of before the whole Murat family. Still my friends endeavored to sustain me and kept assuring me that all the discredit fell on the two Englishmen, and that it was really a piece of good luck to be rid of those erratic people. And soon I really became reconciled. The same winter I had another experience which lives in my memory. One day I received a note bearing the signature “Princesse Annette Tschawtschawadze,” inviting me to call upon this lady at the Grand Hôtel, where she and her two daughters, Lisa and Tamara, were sojourning. At Homburg I had known Princess Annette, who was a sister-in-law of the Dedopali, and I was delighted to see her again. An interesting incident in her life had often been told me. The notorious Circassian leader Shamyl had once abducted her. It was at the beginning of the fifties. The young woman was sitting with two of her younger children and a French governess on the veranda of their villa in Kachetia, when suddenly a band of horsemen fell upon them. The men leaped off, tied the women securely, and lifted them up on their horses. The two children were put into Princess Annette’s arms, and away went the troop. In addition to her terror, the young woman experienced the fearful agony of having one of her children slip from her arms as they kept growing weaker, and seeing it crushed under the horses’ hoofs. The whole abduction was for nothing but ransom. The ladies were treated with the most scrupulous respect in Shamyl’s abode; only he set a very high price on their release—not a price in money, but some political concession or other. The ransom was granted, and Princess Annette was given her liberty; but never in her life could she recover from the horror that she felt at the moment when her child fell from her arms. I found the lady in her hôtel salon, and among the visitors (oh, surprise!) I perceived Heraclius Bagration, Prince of Georgia. And still greater was my surprise when Princess Annette presented to me her seventeen-year-old daughter Tamara and the elderly gentleman as—affianced!...