Hope seemed to revive a little after the issue of this conciliatory oukaz; but it was speedily dashed, when Balgonie, on returning from Cronstadt, whither he had been sent by General Weymarn, suddenly met Captain Vlasfief face to face, near the palace of the favourite Lanskoi.
This personage he would have avoided like a toad or a leper; but from him only might he learn something of her he loved in Schlusselburg, that hateful place to which the Captain was returning; so, overcoming, or rather concealing, his repugnance, he adjourned with him to a café, and ordered wine.
"I dare say you have heard," said Vlasfief, with a strange leer in his eyes, as he tossed his hat and sabre on one sofa and deposited his jack-booted limbs on another, "how the estates of the Count and those of Usakoff have been sold or gifted away; pillaged and ravaged by Lanskoi with a party of Tchernemoski Cossacks; and that the plunder has been stored up in Schlusselburg?"
"Something of all this I have heard," replied Balgonie, when the waiter had filled their glasses and withdrawn, "and—and—but you have there two ladies of the Count's family?"
"True—Mademoiselle Mariolizza, who was engaged to Mierowitz, and the Count's daughter: one beautifully fair, the other black-haired like a Pole. Poor girls!" he continued, while leisurely filling the large china bowl of a tasselled pipe, which suspiciously resembled one Charlie had often seen the old Count smoking, "I remember them both in happier and brighter times; but those who play with fire will, you know, be burned. The sentences on all have been found, recorded, and, in two instances, executed; and they are truly terrible!"
"Executed—the sentence!" repeated Balgonie, in a faint voice.
"Yes; you have been four days at Cronstadt: well, in those four days many things have been done—a light; thank you. The Count is now travelling towards Tobolsk under an escort of Balmain's Lancers. There he will have to hunt the ermine, cultivate asafœtida, or dig in the mines, with a collar at his neck, for the remainder of his days; but for the ladies of his family, a more severe punishment was reserved: ah! he is a stern fellow, old Panim!"
"How—what? Vlasfief, you jest?"
"'Tis no jest: we don't jest on such matters in Russia," replied Vlasfief, who was too thorough a roué—too "used up," in fact—to care for what any woman might suffer or undergo; for every human emotion and sympathy were dead in this man now.
"What new horrors am I to hear?" exclaimed Balgonie, with passionate vehemence, as he dashed his heavy Turkish sabre on the table.