It was some time before I could recover my equanimity sufficiently to go up to my guests. The horror of that lower room was possessing me almost as strongly as it did Pierrot. I felt too that I ought to leave the strangely reunited father and daughter together, to give them an opportunity to realize their relation and understand each other. And it was not until supper was ready that I entered the room to summon them to join me. I found them sitting side by side, the boyar holding his daughter’s hand and a new look on his rugged face, while in Zénaïde’s I saw the dawn of a beautiful affection, which stirred a feeling almost of jealousy in my breast. She told me afterwards that he had cast aside his stern manner, and told her briefly but tenderly the story of his short married life, and of her mother as a beautiful girl in France; of their love for each other, and their happiness in their little girl. He spoke with great feeling of his young wife’s death and his own hard fate, and touched lightly and with much reserve on his half-brother’s share in that past. In that hour of confidence Zénaïde forgot her first impression of the stern boyar, awaking to a new feeling of thankfulness that she was no longer an orphan. I saw, as soon as I looked at them, that she did not now shrink from him as a stranger with perhaps all his brother’s evil characteristics. There was something almost solemn in the picture which they made, the scarred and weather-beaten father and the young daughter, whose beauty was peculiarly pure and delicate, like that of some unsoiled white flower. At my entrance, the boyar rose and thanked me again for rescuing his daughter, and there was a new and deep emotion in his voice, and his manner was much softened. We were at supper, when I heard a voice at the door, and presently Pierrot returned with a troubled face. Fearing something that might alarm Zénaïde, I did not question him until afterwards, and then he told me that it was one of Von Gaden’s servants. The poor fellow had come to me for protection, after hiding all day. The rioters had returned a second time and searched the doctor’s house and his partner’s, and finding Madame von Gaden, dragged her away with them. Von Gaden himself had not yet been taken; but pursuit was hot, for they believed that he had poisoned the late czar, and nothing but his blood would satisfy them. CHAPTER XXVIII. MADAME VON GADEN.