Strange that Zabern, so quick to divine the plans of his enemies, should be so dull at reading a woman's heart! Yet so it was. He really had not the least idea as to the cause of Katina's agitation. He thought it behoved him to find out. He had nursed her as a child on his knee, and now with the tender familiarity of an old friend he placed his hand beneath her chin, and though she attempted a faint resistance, he succeeded in raising her drooping face to his own. The strange wistful look in her dark eyes that met his for a moment only, and then fell again, was a complete revelation to the marshal. It told her secret as clearly as if she had spoken it. "Katina!" he murmured, huskily, quitting his hold of her, and starting back. Katina herself sank on a seat silently and with averted face, the very picture of confusion. "What! am I the man?" If silence gives assent, then Katina had assented. There was a brief interval of silence. Then the affair seemed to present itself in a humorous light to the marshal, for he began to laugh. "You love me! Me! the greatest knave in Czernova! a one-handed grim old fellow like myself, twice your age, with an ugly face, made--thanks to the Russians!--still more ugly by sabre-cuts. You have a strange taste, Katina, when there is many a young and handsome Pole willing to make you his bride." "But none like Zabern," she murmured, yet hardly daring to say the words. Though the marshal looked upon Katina as the fairest maiden in Czernova after the princess, yet the thought of wooing her had never entered his head; but now, while he contemplated her as she trembled like a leaf, looking the more charming in her confusion, the grim old warrior felt within himself a power unfelt till that moment. "Katina," he said, and never before had she heard his voice sound so gentle,--"Katina, you may kiss me--if you like." "It is your place to come and kiss me." Zabern was making a forward movement, but ere he could take the second step Katina was within his arms, and clinging as if she intended never to release her hold. And it was evident that the marshal found his new experiences far more attractive than the business required of him as a minister; for when a minute afterwards a secretary tapped at the door with the announcement that he was bringing state despatches, Zabern, in a loud voice, bade him begone and carry the despatches to the--well, a certain dark gentleman popularly supposed by the Muscovites of Czernova to be a near relation of Zabern himself. "And have you never before loved any woman?" asked Katina, as she sat on the marshal's knee, and seeming to be quite at home there, too! "Never; but now I shall love all women for your sake." "I had rather you did not," said Katina, opening wide her eyes; and then as she nestled closer within his embrace she murmured, "this is more pleasant than to hang for the slaying of Orloff."