y pacified by the recollection, perhaps, of what the speaker's
life had been. Wanda had risen as if to go. The clock had just struck
ten.

"And the princess says the same?" said Kosmaroff, rising also, and
raising her hand to his lips to bid her good-night, after the Polish
fashion.

"Yes," she answered, "I say the same."

XXVIII

IN THE PINE-WOODS

The prince was early astir the next morning. He was a hardy old man,
and covered great distances on his powerful horse. Neither cold nor rain
prevented him from undertaking journeys to some distant village which
had once owned his ancestor as lord and master--in those days when a
noble had to pay no more for killing a peasant than a farmer may claim
for an injured sheep to-day.

The prince never discussed with Wanda those affairs in which, as a
noble, he felt compelled to take an active interest. He had seen,
perhaps, enough in the great revolution of his younger days to teach him
that women--and even Polish women--should take no part in politics. He
believed in a wise and studied ignorance of those things which it is
better not to know. He made no reference to Kosmaroff at breakfast the
next morning, and Wanda asked no questions. She had not slept until
nearly morning, and had heard her father bolt the doors after the
departure of the ex-Cossack. She had heard Kosmaroff's light and quick
step on the frozen snow as he started on his seven-mile walk to Warsaw.

Cartoner's name, then, was not mentioned during the morning meal, which
the prince ate with the deliberation of his years. The morning was
bright and sunny, with a crisp air and sufficient frost to keep the snow
from melting. The prince had recovered from his anger of the previous
evening, and was gay. Wanda, too, seemed light-hearted enough. She was
young and strong. In her veins there flowed the blood of a race that
had always been "game," that had always faced the world with unflinching
eyes, and had never craved its pity. Her father had lost everything, had
lived a life of hardship, almost to privation for one of his rank; and
witnessed the ruin or the downfall of all his friends; and yet he could
laugh with the merry, while with the mourner it was his habit to purse
up his lips beneath the grizzled mustache and mutter a few curt words,
not of condolence, but of stimulation to endure.

He liked to see cheerful faces around him. They helped him, no doubt,
to carry on to the end of his days that high-