This brilliant woman loved him, and had not cared much to conceal that she did so. What was he to say to her--what to tell--how to explain all? It was impossible for him to put in clear, cold words before her the mortifying fear that he could not--should not love her in return, because he was affianced--so hopelessly, as he supposed--to another. Could he ask her to take back a heart he certainly had never sought? It was in every way a perplexing and grotesque situation. 'You have become very silent,' said she, in a tone of pique, while switching, and then checking her horse. 'Of what are you thinking?' 'That if some of those wild Circassians, of whom I have been told, were only to appear now----' 'Heaven forbid! why?' 'That I might empty a saddle or two, and risk in your service the life you saved, and thus make an atonement----' 'I want no such risk run; and what,' she asked a little sharply, 'do you mean by atonement?' 'Only this, that you saved my life, Margarita, and may claim its whole future, if you will,' said he, while Mary's face came reproachfully to memory, for the speech was disloyalty to her, however gallantly meant to Margarita, whom the peculiarity of its tenor irritated rather than flattered. 'This is an idle speech, and I know its value. I thank you for your escort, but we shall part at Palenka, and as another day will see me on the road for Vienna, we shall never meet again; and you may become to me, what I shall never be to you--a dream, without pain perhaps.' This was one of her many strange and passionate speeches, his general or vague replies to which always piqued her. 'Youth and pleasure are a dream,' said he. 'And life itself, say some.' 'But these metaphysicians do not tell us where or how we shall wake to find it so--unless in death.' 'Enough of a subject so gloomy and abstruse,' said she sharply, for Cecil's strange indifference galled and piqued her keenly. Though a fashionably-bred woman, and as a girl accustomed to the best society in Vienna, in wild Servia she was certainly rather untrammelled by the bonds of conventionality. Her life from young girlhood had been full of gaiety, variety, vivid colour, and very rational pleasure. She had been the object of much adulation, admiration, and love, too; she had been amused or bored by all, but won by none till now, when Cecil, the wanderer, the soldier of fortune, with no inheritance but his sword, had won her regard without seeking it. She was assured now--bitterly so--that he would never kneel to her as a lover; yet she was loth that he should ever free himself from the power of her fascinations, if she could make him feel it. Fain would she have won that heart which seemed so fresh and guileless, so unlike any she had yet met--so unworn and prone to have good faith in all men.