I had now time amply to observe and to appreciate that which had impressed me powerfully at first--the wonderful beauty of the lady who protected me, and who spoke English with such marvellous fluency. If the artist's pencil sometimes fails to convey a correct idea of a woman's loveliness--more than all of her expression--a description by mere ink and type can give less than an outline. In stature she was fully five feet seven, full-bosomed and roundly limbed, and yet seemed just past girlhood, in her twentieth or twenty-second year. Her skin was fair, dazzlingly pure as that of any Saxon girl at home; while, by strange contrast, her eyes were singularly dark, the deepest, clearest, and most melting hazel, with soft voluptuous dreamy-looking lids, and long black lashes. Her eyebrows, which were rather straight, were also dark, while the masses of her hair were as golden in hue as ever were those of Lucrezia Borgia; they grew well down upon her forehead, and in the light of the shaded lamp by which she had been reading, ripples of sheen seemed to pass over them like rays of the sun. Her features were very fine, and her ears were white and delicate as if formed of biscuit china, and from them there dangled a pair of the then fashionable Schogoleff earrings of cannon-balls of gold. Her dress was violet-coloured silk, cut low but square at the neck, with loose open sleeves, trimmed with white lace and ruches of white satin ribbon, and its tint consorted well with the fair purity of her complexion. Every way she was brilliant and picturesque, and seemed one of those women whom a man may rapidly learn to love--yea, and to love passionately--and yet know very little about. Once in a lifetime a man may see such a face and such a figure, and never forget them. The dame, in the red sarafan, was a somewhat plain but pleasant-looking old Muscovite lady, whose angularity of feature and general outline of face reminded me of a good-humoured tom cat; and while playing idly with the leaves of her book, she regarded me with a rather dubious expression of eye; for British prisoners did not quite find themselves so much at home in Kharkoff and elsewhere, nor were they so petted and fêted, as the Russian prisoners were at Lewes, among the grassy downs of Sussex. My repast over, and the massive silver tray removed by Ivan Yourivitch, a conversation was begun by the younger lady saying, a little playfully, "You must give me your parole of honour, that you will not attempt to leave this place in secret, or without permission." "From you?" "From me, yes." "Did not duty require it of me, I might never seek the permission, but be too happy to be for ever your captive," said I, gallantly; but she only laughed like one who was quite used to that sort of thing, and held up a white hand, saying, "Do you promise?" "I do, on my honour. But will this pledge to a lady be deemed sufficient?" "By whom?" "Well, say Prince Menschikoff."