ervant conduct the gentleman to her sitting-room and ask
him to wait. She was not long in finishing her toilet. Before she left
the room a servant of the hotel brought another box of flowers from Mr.
Barker. Clementine cut the string and opened the pasteboard shell.
Margaret glanced indifferently at the profusion of roses and pink
pond-lilies--a rare variety only found in two places in America, on Long
Island and near Boston--and having looked, she turned to go.

Clementine held up two or three flowers, as if to try the effect of them
on Margaret's dress.

"Madame would she not put some flowers in her dress?"

No. Madame would not. Madame detested flowers. Whereat the intelligent
Clementine carefully examined the name of the sender, inscribed on a
card which lay in the top of the box. Mr. Barker knew better than to
send flowers anonymously. He wanted all the credit he could get. The
Countess swept out of the room.

At the door of the sitting-room she was met by a young man, who bent low
to kiss her extended hand, and greeted her with a manner which was
respectful indeed, but which showed that he felt himself perfectly at
ease in her society.

Nicolai Alexandrewitch, whom we will call simply Count Nicholas, was the
only brother of Margaret's dead husband. Like Alexis, he had been a
soldier in a guard regiment; Alexis had been killed at Plevna, and
Nicholas had succeeded to the title and the estates, from which,
however, a considerable allowance was paid to the Countess as a
jointure.

Nicholas was a handsome man of five or six and twenty, of middle height,
swarthy complexion, and compact figure. His beard was very black, and he
wore it in a pointed shape. His eyes were small and deep-set, but full
of intelligence. He had all the manner and appearance of a man of gentle
birth, but there was something more; an indescribable, undefinable air
that hung about him. Many Russians have it, and the French have embodied
the idea it conveys in their proverb that if you scratch a Russian you
will find the Tartar. It is rather a trait of Orientalism in the blood,
and it is to be noticed as much in Servians, Bulgarians, Roumanians, and
even Hungarians, as in Russians. It is the peculiarity of most of these
races that under certain circumstances, if thoroughly roused, they will
go to any length, with a scorn of consequence which seems to the Western
mind both barbarous and incomprehensible. Margaret had always liked him.
He was