The next few days passed pleasantly; sometimes the countess was not present, and then the girls would devote themselves to improving the boys' Russian.

Sometimes two sledges would come to the door, and two of the girls accompanied the boys on their drive. On the fourth evening, Count Smerskoff called, and a cloud fell upon the atmosphere.

The countess received him ceremoniously, and maintained the conversation in frigid tones. The girls scarcely opened their lips, and the midshipmen sat apart, as silent as if they understood no word of what was passing.

"I am sorry, countess," the commandant said, "that I was obliged to quarter these two English boys upon you, but every house in the town is full of sick and wounded; and as they were given over to me as officers, though they look to me more like ship-boys, I could not put them in prison with the twenty or thirty soldiers whom we captured at the victory on the heights above Inkerman."

"It is my duty to receive them," the countess said very coldly, "and it therefore matters little whether it is pleasant or otherwise. Fortunately one of them speaks a few words of French, and my daughters can therefore communicate with them. So you have twenty or thirty English prisoners in the jail? Where are all the rest; for, of course, in such a great victory, we must have taken, some thousands of prisoners?"