"Is it possible that that hectic, ill-tempered girl can rival me with such a man as Möllner?" she said to herself. "But shame on me!" she instantly added, "let me not, in my anger, prove a slanderer! She is beautiful, and a thousand times wiser than I,--but, curse her! I could strangle her with this hand!" The passionate woman felt hot tears coursing down her cheeks. She struggled for composure; her chest heaved with the effort to breathe freely. She encouraged her horses to still greater speed, so that her carriage fairly rocked from side to side. She was glorious to behold in her wrath, as she both urged and restrained the spirited animals,--fit emblems of her own wild passions. "But I will show her who she is and who I am," she murmured. "That I should be insulted by this German prude!" And she gave the near horse a cut with her whip, making him rear wildly and then drag on the others in his headlong career. In a few minutes the village was passed through, and the village curs desisted from barking at the horses' heels, and retired growling to their homes. The steep descent of the hill upon which the village was built was close at hand. "Madame," said the groom to her in Russian, "look there!" He pointed to a sign-post by the wayside, warning travellers of the steep road. But it was too late; the countess needed both hands and all her strength to hold in her steeds, and could not reach the handle of the brake. "We shall get down safely," she cried, holding the heads of the four noble animals well in rein. But as the road made a slight turn she recognized in the foot-path before her a well-known form. Her face flushed crimson,--it was Möllner. She no longer saw the steep descent,--she did not see that she must pass the church, where service was held at the time and all vehicles were required by law to pass at a walk; she only saw Johannes, whom she would overtake at all hazards. She gave the horses the rein, and they rushed on as if for their lives. Then Johannes turned his head towards her and made signs to her, but she did not understand them. He stood still. She thundered past the church, and two or three peasants, disturbed in their devotions, came running out and looked menacingly after her. Johannes made signs to her again, more earnestly than before, and now she saw that he meant she should look where she was going,--in the road just before her there was a group of children playing. She tried to turn aside--tried to hold in her horses, but in vain. Neither horses nor carriage could be guided or restrained in the impetus that they had gained from the steep descent, and they tore madly on directly towards the children. Johannes, in the greatest alarm, jumped over the hedge dividing the foot-path from the road. The children scattered in terror.