way the cloud of
sadness which overshadowed her exquisite, dark face. And in the ears
of the Prince rang again the bitter accents of that voice saying in a
harsh, almost revolted tone:

"Yes, a Russian! My father was a Russian!"

CHAPTER VI. A GYPSY PRINCESS

The mystery which seemed to envelop Marsa, the flash of anger with which
she had spoken of the Russian who was her father, all attracted
the Prince toward her; and he experienced a deliciously disquieting
sentiment, as if the secret of this girl's existence were now grafted
upon his own life.

She seemed to have no wish to keep her secret from him. At their first
meeting, during the conversation which followed the dinner and the
musical exhibition given by extraordinary musicians with long, unkempt
locks, Marsa, trusting with a sort of joy to the one whom she regarded
as a hero, told Prince Andras the story of her life.

She related to him the assault made by soldiers of Paskiewich upon
the little Hungarian village, and how her grandfather, leaving his
czimbalom, had fired upon the Russians from the ranks of the honveds.
There was a combat, or rather a butchery, in the sole street of the
town, one of the last massacres of the campaign. The Russians destroyed
everything, shooting down the prisoners, and burning the poor little
houses. There were some women among the Hungarians and Tzigani; they
had loaded the guns of the wounded, comforted the dying and avenged the
dead. Many of them were killed. One of them, the youngest and prettiest,
a gypsy, was seized by the Russian officer, and, when peace was declared
soon after, carried off by him to Russia. This was Tisza Laszlo, Marsa's
mother. The officer, a great Russian nobleman, a handsome fellow and
extremely rich, really loved her with a mad sort of love. He forced her
to become his mistress; but he tried in every way to make her pardon the
brutality of his passion; keeping her half a captive in his castle near
Moscow, and yet offering her, by way of expiation, not only his
fortune but his name, the princely title of which the Tchereteff s,
his ancestors, had been so proud, and which the daughter of wandering
Tzigani refused with mingled hatred and disgust. Princess? She, the
gypsy, a Russian princess? The title would have appeared to her like
a new and still more abhorrent stigma. He implored her, but she was
obdurate. It was a strange, tragic existence these two beings led, shut
up in the immense castle