s there was a hush.
Soft-footed servants went to and fro, all the guests save Estella and I
went away with many condolences. The Princess Nadine was passing away
in the room overlooking the pine woods. She had been thrown from her
horse whilst hunting with the Whichello hounds, and the end was not far
off.

I was sitting in the library with a great sadness in my heart, when the
door opened, and Canon Manningtree, the white-haired rector of
Whichello, came into the room.

"Miss Dene," he said gravely, "in the absence of a priest of the Greek
Church, I have ministered to Princess Milontine. She is going to meet a
merciful Saviour who knows her temptations, and the singular
circumstances in which she has been placed. She desires to see you. Do
not excite her. Speak to her of the infinite love of God. Will you
please go to her _now_."

Weeping, I went.

Sitting beside the sufferer was Maura, who rose when I came in, and left
us two alone, save for that unseen Angel who calls us to the presence of
our God.

The princess looked at me with her beautiful wistful eyes, as she had
looked when she gave me the amber roses in the narrow street.

"Gloria, little sister, I am going to tell _how_ Irene died."

"No, no, not if it distresses you."

"I would rather tell you. Listen! I have not much time to speak. As you
know, we are of a noble Russian family, and Irene and I were the only
children. I was ten years older than Irene, and was educated in France;
she came to England, and was your schoolmate!

"I was passionately fond of the child I had seen an infant lying in her
pink-lined cot, and when she came out and married Prince Alex Laskine, I
prayed that God's sunshine might light on my darling's head. Then, I
myself married, and travelled with my husband in all kinds of strange,
out-of-the-way places; in one of which he died, and I came back to St.
Petersburgh, a childless, lonely widow!

"But there was no Irene; her husband had been implicated in a plot, and
had been sent to O----, one of the most desolate places in Siberia, and
my sister had voluntarily accompanied him!

"When I heard this, I never rested until I too was en route to Siberia!
I wanted to take Irene in my arms and to console her as her dead mother
would have done. O---- was a fearful place, just a colony of dreary huts
by the sea. Behind were the wolf-infested forests; in the midst of it,
the frowning fortress prison! When I showed my ukase, and demand