"Steinmetz.

Oh! why won't he write to me ?" She tore open the letter, read it, and stood holding it in her hand, looking out over the trackless pine-woods with absorbed, speculative eyes.

The sun had just set.

The farthest ridge of pine-trees stood out like the teeth of a saw in black relief on the rosy sky.

Catrina Lanovitch watched the rosiness fade into pearly gray.
"Madame the Countess awaits mademoiselle for tea," said the maid's voice suddenly, in the gloom of the door-way.
"I will come." The village of Thors--twenty miles farther down the river Oster, twenty miles nearer to the junction of that river with the Volga--was little more than a hamlet in the days of which we write.