He lost heart—his spirits began to sink under the rigid confinement to which he was subject, and his doubt and anxiety as to the future issue of the whole affair. He had about him a confused and dazed feeling, such as he had not possessed since he had been in the castle of Edinburgh, and the time of the fatal ball; and as the hours passed by him in solitude, and the detested details of his room—the pattern of the paper on its walls, the divan that bordered them, the skins that lay thereon, the cracks in the ceiling and the bare planking of the floor—seemed to become photographed on his brain, and the senseless jingle of silly airs, the words of absurd rhymes, recurred to him again and again with that provoking but persistent reiteration so common to all—at least to many—when their minds are tortured by doubt or calamity.
Seated there in that prison-room, hearing the sounds of the adjacent camp by day, and by night only the measured tread of the Russian sentinels without, as they trod silently and monotonously to and fro on their posts, Cecil—looking back through the receding vista of the past, and the latter and most bitter portion of his career in which Mary Montgomerie bore a part, was often on the point of asking himself whether it was not a dream rather than a reality, that brief and happy reminiscence of their love; and whether it did not pertain to a life in past ages and under some different phase of existence. In short, his thoughts, under the high-pressure put upon him, became rather wild and incoherent at times.
CHAPTER VII.
CECIL'S VISITOR.
From the monotony of his moody and irritating reflections he was roused one day by the entrance of a visitor, and he started on finding himself face to face with Margarita Palenka, who had come to the camp on horseback, escorted by old Theodore, the veteran of Sadowa. Her eyes were full of unshed tears, as she gave Cecil her hand, and it was impossible for him to behold this beautiful girl's sympathy unmoved.
'How can I ever thank you,' said he, 'for all this deep and kindly interest in me—almost a stranger?'
'I fear the worst, from what my brother says,' she replied in a low and husky voice.
'The worst—death?'
'Better that than—Siberia!'
'So say I,' was Cecil's grim response; and then he added hotly: 'I am a British subject; how dare they menace me with such a fate?'