"_Whom_ did you say?" she asked, in a voice of terror, while trembling violently. "Paulovitch Count Volhonski, a name well known in the Russian army, I believe; he commanded the Vladimir regiment at the Alma and in Sebastopol." "And he--he fell by _your_ hand?" "I regret to say that he did," I replied, slowly and perplexedly. "You know him, and are certain of this?" "Certain as that I now address you--most certain, to my sorrow." "_O Gospodi pomiloui!_"[4] she exclaimed, clasping her hands together, and seeming now pale as the new-fallen snow; "my brother--my brother!" "Your _brother?_" I exclaimed, in genuine consternation. "Slain by you--your hand!" she wailed out, wildly and reproachfully. "O, it cannot be." "Speak--how?" She stamped her foot as she spoke, and no prettier foot in all Russia could have struck the carpet with a more imperial air. Her eyes were flashing now through tears; even her teeth seemed to glisten; her hands were clenched, and I felt that she regarded me, for the time, with hate and loathing. "He fell, and his horse, too--yet, now that I think of it," I urged, "he may be untouched; and from my soul I hope that such may be the case, for personally he is my friend." I felt deeply distressed by the turn matters had so suddenly taken; while Madame Tolstoff, to whom she now made some explanation in Russian, regarded me with fierce and undisguised hostility. "Then there is yet hope?" she asked, piteously. "That he may be simply wounded--yes." "For that hope I thank you, Hospodeen: a little time shall tell us all." "I was attacked and outnumbered; my own life was in the balance, and I knew him not, nor did he know me, until we were at close quarters, in the moment of his fall. To defend oneself is a natural impulse; and it has been truly said, that if a man armed with a red-hot poker were to make a lunge even at the greatest philosopher, he would certainly parry it, though he were jammed between two sacks of gunpowder. Then I have the honour of addressing the Hospoza Valerie?" "Yes," she replied, with hauteur; "but who are you, that know _my_ name?" "I am Captain Henry Hardinge, who--" "The Hospodeen Hardinge" (Hardin_ovitch_ she called it), "who so greatly befriended my dear brother in Germany, and who saved his life at Inkermann?" "The same." "I cannot receive you with joy; the present terrible tidings cloud all the past. Yet I have promised to protect you," she added, giving me both her hands to kiss, "and protected you shall be--even should my dead brother be borne here to-night!" So the slender girl with the dark orbs and golden hair, she of whose miniature I had custody for a little time on that memorable and exciting morning in the Heiligengeist Feld at Hamburg, was now a lovely woman in all the budded bloom of past twenty--a fair Russian, with "more peril in her eyes than fifty of their swords!"