I had now time amply to observe and to appreciate that which had impressed me powerfully at first--the wonderful beauty of the lady who protected me, and who spoke English with such marvellous fluency. If the artist's pencil sometimes fails to convey a correct idea of a woman's loveliness--more than all of her expression--a description by mere ink and type can give less than an outline. In stature she was fully five feet seven, full-bosomed and roundly limbed, and yet seemed just past girlhood, in her twentieth or twenty-second year. Her skin was fair, dazzlingly pure as that of any Saxon girl at home; while, by strange contrast, her eyes were singularly dark, the deepest, clearest, and most melting hazel, with soft voluptuous dreamy-looking lids, and long black lashes. Her eyebrows, which were rather straight, were also dark, while the masses of her hair were as golden in hue as ever were those of Lucrezia Borgia; they grew well down upon her forehead, and in the light of the shaded lamp by which she had been reading, ripples of sheen seemed to pass over them like rays of the sun. Her features were very fine, and her ears were white and delicate as if formed of biscuit china, and from them there dangled a pair of the then fashionable Schogoleff earrings of cannon-balls of gold.

Her dress was violet-coloured silk, cut low but square at the neck, with loose open sleeves, trimmed with white lace and ruches of white satin ribbon, and its tint consorted well with the fair purity of her complexion. Every way she was brilliant and picturesque, and seemed one of those women whom a man may rapidly learn to love--yea, and to love passionately--and yet know very little about. Once in a lifetime a man may see such a face and such a figure, and never forget them. The dame, in the red sarafan, was a somewhat plain but pleasant-looking old Muscovite lady, whose angularity of feature and general outline of face reminded me of a good-humoured tom cat; and while playing idly with the leaves of her book, she regarded me with a rather dubious expression of eye; for British prisoners did not quite find themselves so much at home in Kharkoff and elsewhere, nor were they so petted and fêted, as the Russian prisoners were at Lewes, among the grassy downs of Sussex. My repast over, and the massive silver tray removed by Ivan Yourivitch, a conversation was begun by the younger lady saying, a little playfully,

"You must give me your parole of honour, that you will not attempt to leave this place in secret, or without permission."

"From you?"

"From me, yes."

"Did not duty require it of me, I might never seek the permission, but be too happy to be for ever your captive," said I, gallantly; but she only laughed like one who was quite used to that sort of thing, and held up a white hand, saying,

"Do you promise?"

"I do, on my honour. But will this pledge to a lady be deemed sufficient?"

"By whom?"

"Well, say Prince Menschikoff."

"We shall not consult him, unless we cannot help it; besides," she added, with a proud expression on her upper lip, "what is he, though Minister of Marine, Governor of Finland and Sebastopol, but the grandson of a pastry-cook!"

"Prince Gortchakoff, then?"

"They are cousins; but do not take rank even in Russia with the old families, like the Dolgourikis and others, who are nobles of the first class."

On the suggestion, apparently, of the elder lady, whom she named Madame Tolstoff, she proceeded to ask me many questions, which I cared not to answer, as they had direct reference to the strength of our forces, and the plans and projects of the Allied Generals regarding Sebastopol; and though my information was only limited to such as one of subaltern rank could possess, I knew how artfully the most important military and political secrets have been wormed from men by women, and was on my guard. Her excellent English she accounted for by telling me that in her girlhood she had an English governess. She told me, among other things, that she had gone in her carriage, with hundreds of other ladies from Sebastopol, Simpheropol, and Bagtchi Serai (or "the Seraglio of Gardens"), to see the battle of the Alma. It began quite like a prasnik or holiday with them all, as they had expected, among other marvels, to see St. Sergius, whose sacred image was borne by the Kazan column, till the latter was routed by the Highland Brigade, and bundled over the hill, image and all, though Innocent, Archbishop of Odessa, in one of his sermons to the garrison of Sebastopol (published in the Russian Messenger) confidently predicted a fourth appearance of the patriotic saint on that occasion; but my fair informant added, that when the fighting began, she had driven away homeward in horror.

She quizzed me a little about the small dimensions of the island in which we dwelt, an island where the people elbowed each other for lack of room; she asked me if it were really true that our soldiers were sailors; and if it was also true that our Admiral in the Baltic always carried a little sword under one arm, and a great fish under the other, alluding to a popular Moscow caricature of Sir Charles Napier. It was impossible not to laugh with her, for her charming tricks of foreign manner, the arch smiles of her occasionally half-closed eyes, and her pretty ways of gesticulation with the loveliest of white hands, from which she had now drawn the gloves, were all very seductive; moreover the Russians have a natural mode of imbuing with heartiness every phrase and expression, however simple or merely polite. She always spoke of the Czar with more profound awe and respect than even Catholics do of the Pope, or Mahometans do of the Sultan; but it should be borne in mind that in Russia, as Golovine says, "next to the King of Heaven, the Czar is the object of adoration. He is, in the estimation of the Russian, the representative and the elect of God; so he is the head of his church, the source of all the beatitudes, and the first cause of all fear. His hand distributes as bounteously as his arm strikes heavily. Love, fear, and humble respect are blended in this deification of the monarch, which serves most frequently only to task the cupidity of some, and the pusillanimity of others. The Czar is the centre of all rays, the focus to which every eye is directed; he is the 'Red Sun' of the Russians, for thus they designate him. The Czar is the father of the whole nation; no one has any relation that can be named in the same day with the Emperor; and when his interest speaks, every other voice is hushed!"

So, whenever this lady spoke of him, her eyes seemed to fill with melting light, and her cheek to suffuse with genuine enthusiasm; and as I listened to her, and looked upon her rare beauty, her singular hair, her laughing lips; and her ease of manner that declared a perfect know............