"I cannot describe to you, ladies, the relief that came to my mind on discovering that it had neither been lost nor stolen, but was safe--"
"In Natalie's bosom!" said Mariolizza, laughing.
"Certainly the last place, where, for her own sake, I would place a dispatch of the widow of Peter III.," responded the other, haughtily; but Balgonie felt his heart beat quicker as she spoke. Her voice was sweet and low, and had a wonderful chord in it.
The day was mild and beautiful, and truly an April one. The last of the ice had disappeared from the river; not a flake of snow was visible among the woods or on the distant hills; and the bright sun of noon shone clearly and brilliantly from a deep-blue sky flecked by floating masses of white cloud, and cast across the bosom of the Louga the shadows of the great fir trees that spread like a sea of solemn cones for miles along its banks; and amid that woody sea, the most striking feature was a white-walled monastery with its "golden-headed church" and all its metal cupolas glittering in the sunshine.
As they promenaded on the gravelled terrace that lay before the Count's residence, Balgonie could see the domains of Mierowitz that lay for miles around: the patrimonial village of the Count, nestling among the coppice, containing a dozen or so of stone houses, and double that number of quaint tumble-down edifices of wood, and a church with a little gilt cupola, where his serfs said their prayers, and thanked God and him for permission to live and breathe, and to hoard their roubles in secret--for wealth in a serf was a sure source of misery, extortion, and perhaps of torture, if discovered.
In the immediate foreground were wharves, where the wood for masts and spars from his forests were launched, and formed into great rafts for conveyance to the Gulf of Finland. The din of axes and the crash of falling timber, with the cheerful voices of the woodmen and labourers, were heard rising from the echoing woods, as they lopped and trimmed the giant pines for conveyance to the Baltic coast; for his forest trees were one of the chief sources of revenue to Count Mierowitz.
"Your father's mansion is indeed a noble one!" said Balgonie, who after surveying the landscape from the terrace, ran his eyes over the façade of the castle, as it was named, though by no means so well fortified as his patrimonial tower in Strathearn, which dated from the days of the Sixth James.