atalie burst into wild tears, revelling in the solitude that gave her
freedom. She pressed the picture against her face, and cried her agony
aloud to the ocean. Thrilling memories rushed through her, and she lived
again the first ecstasy of grief. She did not fling herself upon the
ground, or otherwise indulge in the acrobatics of woe, but she shook
from head to foot. Between the heavy sobs her breath came in hard gasps,
and tears poured, hiding the gray desolation of the scene.

Suddenly, through it all, she became conscious that some one was
watching her. Instinctively she knew that it was the same gaze which so
often had alarmed her. Fear routed every other passion. She realized
that she was unprotected, a mile from the Fort, out of the line of its
vision. The brutal head of the miller's son seemed to thrust itself
before her face. Overwhelmed with terror, she turned swiftly and ran,
striking blindly among the low bushes, her glance darting from right to
left. No one was to be seen for a moment; then she turned the corner of
a boulder and came upon a man. She shrieked and covered her face with
her hands, now too frightened to move. The man neither stirred nor
spoke; and, despite this alarming circumstance, her disordered brain,
in the course of a moment, conceived the thought that no subject of
Rotscheff would dare to harm her.

Moreover, her brief glance had informed her that this was not the
miller's son; which fact, illogically, somewhat tempered her fear. She
removed her hands and compelled herself to look sternly at the creature
who had dared to raise his eyes to the Countess Natalie Ivanhoff. She
was puzzled to find something familiar about him. His grizzled hair
was long, but not unkempt. The lower part of his face was covered by
a beard. He was almost fleshless; but in his sunken eyes burned
unquenchable fire, and there was a determined vigour in his gaunt
figure. He might have been any age. Assuredly, the outward seeming of
youth was not there, but its suggestion still lingered tenaciously in
the spirit which glowed through the worn husk. And about him, in spite
of the rough garb and blackened skin, was an unmistakable air of
breeding.

Natalie, as she looked, grew rigid. Then she uttered a cry of rapturous
horror, staggered, and was caught in a fierce embrace. Her stunned
senses awoke in a moment, and she clung to him, crying wildly, holding
him with straining arms, filled with bitter happiness.

In a f