It was most creditable to the conversational powers of the prince that the young lady, with her pretensions, was never tired of these interviews. And yet, what he said could not be called interesting, exactly; at all events the manner in which he said it was not so. He was never heard to speak in that animated and quick manner which is peculiar to young people (and the prince was very young yet, perhaps twenty-four), especially when they speak of favorite topics, or are excited by opposition. It was always the same monotonous utterance, as if the words were men and the sentences sections, and they were all marching about, carefully keeping pace. It was significant, too, that the prince preferred speaking French, a language which has naturally such a logical rhythm, although he spoke German as well and as fluently. It was perhaps due to this fact--that the conversation was almost exclusively carried on in a foreign idiom--that Helen felt the strange character of his mind so much less. For the prince was, after all, in his appearance, and not less so in his manner of thinking and feeling, more of a Russian than of a German. All the memories of his childhood and youth, with the only exception of the short time which he had spent in France, and more recently in Germany, were Russian. He had been page at the court of the Emperor Nicholas, and the daily sight of this magnificent monarch, with whom he was even said to share certain peculiarities of figure and carriage, had probably not been without influence on the character of the young prince. He had received a purely military education among the cadets of the Michailow palace, the same palace whose vast apartments witnessed in that fearful night the murder of an emperor, when the wife of Paul I., frightened by the low sound of a number of voices and clanking of arms, snatched the young Princes Nicholas and Michael from their beds and hastened with them through the long suit of rooms to the emperor's apartments, when icy Count Pahlen met her, carried her almost forcibly back to her rooms, and locking the door carefully, said: "_Restez tranquille, madame; il n'y a pas de danger pour vous._" The prince had quite a number of similar stories, and they did not fail to have their effect upon the mind of the fanciful girl. It was a new version of the adventures with which the warlike Moor filled the heart of the daughter of the Venetian patrician. Desdemona also shuddered at the blood flowing in streams, through his accounts, but the hero appeared only the more marvellous; and although Helen often felt an icy breath rising from these palace souvenirs of the Russian page, she was none the less captivated and ensnared by the secrecy and the horrors that surrounded them with an irresistible charm. She dreamt of a life in comparison with which the life she was now leading appeared very pitiful and mean. She saw herself a lady in waiting at a court where beauty and cleverness are