CHAPTER I
TWO YEARS AFTERWARDS
"Here's to the Princess of Czernova!" cried Noel Trevisa,—a dark-eyed, handsome young fellow,—raising his glass as he spoke. "Have you seen her yet, Paul?"
Captain Cressingham, or to use the new name assumed by him on the death of a relative, Captain Woodville, smiled at the enthusiasm with which his friend proposed the toast.
"I entered Slavowitz only last evening," he replied, "and have already been asked that question six times. It seems to be the first one put to a visitor."
"And when you have seen her you will cease to wonder at the pride of the Czernovese in their princess. Natalie Lilieska is more than beautiful,—she is Beauty's self."
This interchange took place on an elevated balcony of the Hôtel de Varsovie, the principal establishment of its kind in Slavowitz, the picturesque capital of the old Polish principality of Czernova.
Between Paul and his companion stood a marble-topped table decorated with a bottle of Chartreuse and a box of cigars, and in the quiet enjoyment of these luxuries the two Englishmen yielded themselves to lazy abandon in the soft sunshine of a spring morning, watching the gay current of Czernovese life as it flowed along the boulevard beneath their feet.
Two years had elapsed since the night when Barbara had been carried off to perish, as Paul believed, in the engulfing of Castel Nuovo.
A fishing-barque passing by next morning had taken Paul from the island; its arrival was timely, for the vessel had scarcely gone half-a-mile when the sea became violently agitated, and Isola Sacra itself disappeared beneath the waves. The frightened fishermen, perceiving that the force of the earthquake was not yet spent, refused to put in on the Dalmatian coast, believing it to be safer on water than on land. For four-and-twenty hours they kept out on the deep, disembarking only when they deemed the peril past.