I re-entered the chateau feeling sad, irresolute, and crushed in spirit. I had lost that on which I had set my heart, and at the hands of Tolstoff, my rival, I might yet lose more, if his threats meant anything--liberty, perhaps life itself.

What, then, was to be done? I was without money, without arms, or a horse. All these Valerie might procure for me; but how or where was I to address her again? After the result of our last interview she would be certain to avoid me more sedulously than ever. As I passed through the magnificent vestibule, which was hung with rose-coloured lamps, the light of which fell softly on the green malachite pedestals and white marble Venuses, Dianas, and Psyches, which had no part of them dressed but their hair, which was done to perfection, I met Ivan Yourivitch, who made me understand that the officer whom the Pulkovnick expected with certain papers from Sebastopol had arrived, and was now in the dining-room; but the Pulkovnick had smoked himself off to sleep, and must not, under certain pains and penalties, be disturbed. Would I see him? And so, before I knew what to say, or had made up my mind whether to avoid or meet the visitor, I was ushered into the stately room, when I found myself once more face to face with Mr. Hawkesby Guilfoyle!

The ex-cornet of wagoners was clad now in the gray Russian military capote, with a sword and revolver at his girdle. His beard had grown prodigiously; but his hair--once so well cared for--was now very thin indeed, and he did not appear altogether to have thriven in the new service to which he had betaken himself. His aspect was undoubtedly haggard. Suspected by his new friends (who urged him on duties for which he had not the smallest taste), and in perpetual dread of falling into the hands of the old, by whom he would be certainly hanged or shot, his life could not be a pleasant one; so he had evidently betaken himself to drink, as his face was blotched and his eyes inflamed in an unusual degree.

He was very busy with a decanter of sparkling Crimskoi and other good things which the dvornick had placed before him, and on looking up he failed to recognise me, clad as I was in a suit of Volhonski's plain clothes, which were "a world too wide" for me; and no doubt I was the last person in the world whom he wished or expected to see in such a place and under such circumstances--being neither guest nor prisoner, and yet somewhat of both characters. He bowed politely, however, and said something in Russian, of which he had picked up a few words, and then smiled blandly.

"You smile, sir," said I, sternly; "but remember the adage, a man may smile and smile, and be----"

"Stay, sir!" he exclaimed, starting up; "this is intolerable! Who the devil are you, and what do you mean?"

"Simply that you are a villain, and of the deepest die!"

His hand went from the neck of the decanter towards his revolver; then he reseated himself, and with his old peculiar laugh said, while inserting his glass in his right eye,

"O, this beats cock-fighting! Hardinge of the Welsh Fusileers! Now, where on earth did you come from?"

"Not from the ranks of the enemy, at all events," I replied.

His whole character--the wrongs he had tried to do me and had done to many others; the artful trick he had played me at Walcot Park his pitiless cruelty to Georgette Franklin; his base conduct to me when helpless on the field of Inkermann; his guiding a sortie in the night; his entire career of unvarying cunning and treachery--caused me to regard the man with something of wonder, mingled with loathing and contempt, but contempt without anger. He was beneath that.

"So you are a prisoner of war?" said he, after a brief pause, during which he had drained a great goblet of the Crimskoi--a kind of imitation champagne.

"What I am is nothing to you--my position, mind, and character are the same."

"Perhaps so," he continued; "but I think that the most contemptible mule on earth is a fellow in whom no experience or time can effect a change of mind, or cure of those narrow opinions in which he is first brought up, as the phrase is, in that little island of ours."

"So you have quite adopted the Russian idea of Britain?" said I, with a scornful smile.

"Yes; and hope to have more scope for my talents on the Continent than I ever had there. I should not have left the army of my good friend Raglan----"

"Who presented you with that ring, eh?"

"Had there not been the prospect of a row about a rooking one night in camp, and a bill which some meddling fellow called a forgery. Bah! a ba............