CHAPTER XI.
OLGA, THE GIPSY.
Balgonie had scarcely thrown himself at length on the soft, but not very odorous, pile of skins which formed his couch, when a face appeared at the little window, which was pulled open, and a voice called to him in a low and earnest whisper:
"Hospodeen—Carl Ivanovitch! Hospodeen, attend to me; but oh, be silent, as you value your life!"
He started up, softly approached the window, and saw, by the dim starlight, a fair female face with very dark eyes, white and regular teeth, and long, glittering ear-rings.
"I have seen this face before," thought he; "but when, and where?"
Balgonie, in truth, was too much of a lover to have more than one female face ever before his eyes—that of Natalie Mierowna.
"I am Olga, the gipsy," said the girl, humbly.
"Olga! Olga! whom I saw at the house of Count Mierowitz this evening?"
"The same, Hospodeen!" (Balgonie expressed an exclamation of astonishment to find her, as he thought, so far from that place.) "You gave me a silver kopec once upon a time, at Krejko, when passing through that town with Michail Podatchkine; and, this evening you saved me from the whip of the dvornick, when for the third time I had ventured near the Count's mansion, in a vain search for you, or the Hospoza Mierowna."