CHAPTER II.

Te Aroha News, Volume II, Issue 89, 14 February 1885, Page 4

CHAPTER 11.

Oloa Davidoff's wedding was one of the most brilliant social successes of that Tobolsk season. DavidofT £>ere surpassed himself in the costliness of his exotics, the magnificence of his presents, the reckless abundance of his Veuve Clicquot. Madame Davidoff successfully caught the Governor and the General, and the Englifh traveller from India via the Himalayas. The Baron looked as gorgeous as he was handsome in his half Russian half Tartar uniform and his Oriental display of pearls and diamonds. Olga herself was the prettiest and most blushing bride ever seen in Tobolsk, a simple English girl, fresh from the proprieties of The Laurels at Clapham, among all that curious mixed cosmopolitan society of semi- civilised Siberians, Catholic Poles, and Orthodox Russians. As soon as the wedding was fairly over, the bride and bridegroom started off by toross to make their way across the southern plateau to the Baron's village. It was a long and dreary drive, that wediding tour, in a jolting carriage over Siberian roads, resting at wayside postinghouses, bad enough while they were still on the main line ot the Imperial mails, but degenerating into true Central- Asian caravanserais when once they had got off the beaten track into the wild neighbourhood of the Baron's village. Nevertheless, Olga Davidoff bore up against the troubles and diecomforts of the journey with a brave heart, for was not the Baron always by her side ? And who could be kinder, or gentler, or more thoughtful than her Buriat hue*

band ? Yes, it waa a long and hard journey, up among thoso border mountains of the Chinese and Tibetan frontier ; but Olga felt at home at last when, after three weeks of incessant jolting, they arrived at the Buriat mountain stronghold, under cover of the night ; and Niaz led her straightway to her own pretty little European boudoir, which he had prepared for her beforehand at immense expense and trouble in his upland village. The moment they entered, Olga saw a pretty little room, papered and carpeted in English fashion, with a small piano ovor in the corner, a lamp burning brightly on tho tiny side-table and a roaring fire of logs blazing and crackling upon the simple stono ' hearth, A book or two lay upon the shelf at the side : she glanced casually at their titles as slio passed, and saw that they wore some of Tourgerrieff s latest novols, a paper coverod Zola fresh from Paris, a volume eaoh of Tennyson, Browning, Carlyle, and Swinburne, a Demikoff, an Emile Augior, a "Revue dcs Doux Mondes," and a late number of an English ' magazine. She valued these things at ortce for their own sakes, but still more because she felt instinctively that Niaz had taken tho trouble to get them there for her beforehand in this remote and uncivilised corner. She turned to the piano: a light pieco by Sullivan lay open before her, and a number of airs from Chopin, Schubert, and Mendelssohn weie scattered loosely on tho top one above the other. Her heart was too full to utter a word, but she wont straight up to her husband, threw her arms tendorly around his neck, and kisssd him with the utmost fervour. Niaz smoothed her wavy fair hair gently with his hand, and hi? eyes sparkled with conscious pica Hire as ho returned her caross and kissed her forehead. .After a while, they went into tho noxb room to dinner — a small hall, somowhat barbaric in type, but not ill-fornishod ; and Olga noticed that tho two or throe sorvants wero very fietca and savago-looking Buriata of tho most pronounced Tartar type. Tho dinner was a plain one, plainly served, of rough country hospitality ; but tho up pointments were all Emopoan, and, though simple, good and pufliciont. Niaz had said so much to her of tho discomforts of hte mountain stronghold that Olga was quito delighted to find things on tho wholo so comparatively civilised, clean, and European. A few days' sojourn in tho fort — it was rather that than a castle or a village — showed Olga pretty clearly what sort of life s.he was henceforth to expect. Her husband's? subjects numbered about a hundred and fifty (with as many more women and childicn) ; fiey rendered him tho most implicit obedieneo, and they evidently looked upon him entirely as a superior boing. They were trained to a military discipline, and regularly drilled every morning by Niaz in the queer old semi Chinese courtyard of the mouldering castle. Olga -was so accustomed to a (Russian military regime that this circumstance never struck her as being anything extraordinary ; she regarded it only a" part of tho Baron's ancestral habits as a prr.ctically independent Tartar chieftain. Week after week rolled away at the fort, and though Olga had absolutely no one to whom she could speak oxcept her own hu.sband (for the Buriats knew no Russian swo tho word ot command), sho didn't find time hang heavily on her hands in tho quaint, old-fashioned village The walks and rides about were really delightful ; tho scenery was grand and beautiful to the last degree ; the Chinese-looking houses and Tartar dress were odd and picturesque, like a scene in a theatre. It was all so absurdly romantic. After all, Olga said to herself with a smile more than once, it isn't half bad being married to a Tartar chieftain up in tho border mountains, when you actually come to try it. Only, sho confessed in her own heart that she would probably always be very glad when the wintor came again, and she got back from these mountain solitudes to tho congenial gaiety of Tobolsk or Petersburg. And Niaz— well, Niaz loved her distractedly. No husband on earth could possibly love a woman better. Still, Olga could never understand why he sometimes had to leave her for three or four days together, and why during his absence, when sho was left all alono at night in the solitary fort w ith those dreadful Buriats, they kept watch and ward so carefully all the time, and seemed so relieved whon Niaz camo back. But whenever sho asked him about it, Niaz only looked grave and anxious), and replied with a would-be careless wave of tho hand that part of his duty was to gu ird the frontier, and that the Czar had not conferred a title and an order upon him for nothing. Olga felt frightened and disquieted on all such occasions, but somohow felt, from Niaz's manner, that sho must not question him further on the matter. One day, after one of those occasional excursions, Niaz came back in high spirits, and kissed her more tenderly and affectionately than ever. After dinner, ho read to her out of a book of Fronch poems a grand piece of Victor Hugo's, and then made her git down to tho piano and play him his favourite air from " Dor Freisehutz " twice over. Whon she had finished, he leant back in his chair and murmured quietly in French (which they always spoke together), "And this is in the mountains of Tartary ! One would say a soir6e of St. Petersburg or of Paris." Olga turned and looked at him softly. " What is the time, dearest Niaz?" sho said with a smile. " Shall Ibo ablo to play you still that dance of Pinsuli's." Niaz pulled out his watch and answered quickly, "Only ten o'clock, darling. You havo plenty of timo still." Something in tho look of the watch he held in hi? hand struck Olga a& queer and unfamiliar. She glanced at it sideways, and noticed hurridly that Niaz was trying to replace it unobserved in his waistcoat pocket. " I haven't seen that watch before," sho said suddenly ; *' let me look at it, dear, will you ?" Niaz drew it out and handed it over to her with affected nonchalance ; but in the undercurrent of his expression Olga caught a glimpse of a hang-dog look she had never before observed in it. She turned over the watch and looked on the back. To her immense surprise it bore the initials "F. de K." engraved upon the cover, "These letters don't be^ng to you, Niaz," she said, scanning it curiously. IS iaz moved uneasily in his chair. • ' No, " he answered, "not to me, Olga. It's— it's an old family relic— an heirloom, in fact. It belonged to my mother's mother. She was— a Mdlle. do Keronac, I believe from Morbihan in Brittany.' Olga's eyes looked at him through and through with a strange new-born suspicion. What could it mean ? She knew he was telling her a falsehood. Had the watch belonged — to some other lady ? What was the meaning of his continued absences ? Could ho but no. It was a man's watch, not a lady's. And if so— why, if so, then Niaz had clearly told her a falsehood in that too, and must be trying to concealsomething about it. That night, for the first time, Olga Davidoff began to distrust her Buriat husband. Next morning, getting up a little early and walking on the parapet of the queer

old fortress, she saw Niaz in the court below, jumping and stamping in a furious temper upon something on the ground. To hoy horror, she saw that his face was all hideously distorted by anger, and that as ho raged and stamped the Tartar cast in his features, never before visible, came out quite clearly and distinctly. Olga looked on, and trembled violently, but dared not speak to him. A few minutes later ftiaz came in to breakfast, gay as usual, with a fresh flower stuck prettily in the button-holo of his undress coat and a smile playing unconcernedly around the clear cut corners of his handsome thin-lipped mouth. " Niaz," his wife said to him anxiously, " where is the watch you showed me last night?" His face never altered a moment as he replied with the same bland and innocent smile us ever, "My darling, I have broken it all to little pieces. I saw it annoyed you in some way when I showed it to you yesterday, and this morning I took it out accidentally aci tho lower courtyard. The sight of it pub mo in a violent temper. • Cursed thing/ I said, * you shall never again step in so cruelly between mo and my darling. Thero, take that, and that, and that, rascal !' and I stamped it to pieces under foot in tho courtyard.' Olga turned pale, and looked at him horrified. He smiled again and took her wee hand tenderly in his. " Little ono," ho said, " you need'nt be afraid ; it is only our quick Buriat fashion. Wo lose our tempers sometimes, but it is soon over. It is nothing. A little whirlwind— and, pouf, it passes." "But, Niaz, you said it was a family heirloom !" " Well, darling, and for your sake I j ground it to powdor. Voila tout ! Come, no more about it ; it isn't worth the trouble. Let us go to broakfast "