"Carl," said Basil, taking the hand of Balgonie, "Natalie has told me all."
"Yes--all that passed in Louga. Dear Natalie has never had a secret from me."
"And you forgive me?" said Balgonie earnestly.
"That if you do not join us, you will, at least, not actively oppose our scheme."
"Know this then," replied the other emphatically, yet softly, "that on its success depends the success of your love; for if it fails, then all our lives are lost!"
"You say that you love my cousin Natalie?" said young Usakoff, in a somewhat loftier tone.
"With all my heart--with all my soul, I do!" replied Balgonie, pressing a hand of Natalie between his own.
"Yet, Carl, if you valued generosity and loved pity--if you loved glory and honour, as a soldier should, you would risk the loss even of _her_,--yea, give her up, if necessary,--and join us!"
"What would either life or glory be after such a sacrifice? Ah, my friend, you never loved as I do!" replied Charlie, with some irritation of manner.
"Perhaps; but I have always thought how grandly terrible a figure was made by Mohammed the Great, when, on a stage, before his discontented army, he struck off the head of a favourite Sultana to convince his soldiers that he preferred glory to love."
"Cousin, cousin," said Natalie, who felt all the peril and delicacy of her lover's position, "you talk thus to-day, when last night you shed tears--yes, bitter tears for the loss of your sister. We were all taken prisoners together, Carl--my poor father, Mariolizza, and I. Bound with cords,--see, the marks are on me still," she added, showing her white wrists, while her dark eyes filled with a dusky fire,--"we were conveyed in a covered kabitka towards St. Petersburg, on the way to which it broke down, in a wood near Paulovsk, not far from the outer walls of the imperial gardens. There, in the confusion, I was enabled to escape, by the aid of the gipsy girl Olga, who, hoping some such chance might occur, had followed us afoot from Louga; and through her further knowledge and assistance, I was enabled to join my brother Basil here."
"My dear old father--and my soft and tender Mariolizza--a blow must be rapidly struck, if we would save them from greater horrors than those they now endure!" exclaimed Basil: "the die has been cast now; and if I cannot save them and our legitimate Emperor, we can at least all perish together."