d through his head, there
rose upon his inner ear a sudden note of melody, vagrant, sweet and
melancholy as the songs of the Steppes. Known song it was not, however;
but something unique, as were all the airs that came to him unbidden.
Under its influence it was natural that his face should change, and
soften. But Michael, imagining that rapt expression to be the result of
his own words, was well satisfied; and he sent the boy from him so
preoccupied with his uncomprehended gift, that the immediate prospect of
the new life faded, for the moment, into the dim land of the unimportant
Real.

This brief ecstasy of unsought happiness could not last, however. During
the ensuing days Ivan was obliged to banish dreams, and yield himself to
preparations for that change which, though it should have brought
something of eager anticipation to his boy's mind, was really invested
with an unreasonable dread: dread rooted no less in a presentiment of
his own than in the expression of his mother's face, the morning redness
of her eyes, the uncontrollable quiver of her lip. Sophia, indeed, had
received a blow that she was not to recover from. But the full misery of
her immediate future she could, fortunately, not as yet surmise.

The farewell between Ivan and his quiet tutor was somewhat pathetic. The
prospects of the Pole were, in their way, far drearier than those of his
pupil. He was an intensely shy man; and yet the thought of leaving the
home which had come so perfectly to suit his sensitive temperament, was
to him more calamitous than the prospect of finding and fitting himself
into another place. On the last morning, master and pupil spoke but
little. Ivan sat drearily strumming out one of the nocturnes of that
young countryman of Ludmillo's, lately dead but already hailed immortal
by a select few, Monsieur Chopin; and the heart-break in its strange
harmonies seemed to express all that neither of them dared attempt to
say. Fortunately, the strain did not last long. It was barely ten
o'clock when Casimir, having imprinted a kiss upon the hand of his
Princess, and actually left another on Ivan's scarlet cheek, was driven,
with his modest box, away from the familiar portal into the unfriendly
realms beyond. With him slipped away the first large piece of Ivan's
child-world. And the rest of it was not to be long in following.

Of the final clinging of Sophia to her child, the child of her
martyrdom, the man-child who must be relinqui