Tiflis and Baku grows less and less attractive as you near the latter town and the hills recede from the view. Situated on the shore of the Caspian Sea, Baku is the windiest, sandiest, most unpleasantly odoriferous town that I have ever visited. The name, I believe, means a blow of the wind,' and is most apt. The surrounding country consists for the most part of bare sandhillocks or plains, and nothing but a keen desire to see how the naphtha is worked could induce one to linger long in it.

From Baku to Astrakhan is about two days by steamer, stopping en route at Derband and Petrovsk, both pretty places; but the Caspian Sea lacks good harbours, and its commerce is comparatively insignificant. The trip up the Volga from Astrakhan to Nijni Novgorod is interesting; the steamers plying up and down are innumerable, and many of them are simply luxurious in point of accommodation and food. The scenery is nothing to speak of, but the towns are interesting, and some of them, as Nijni Novgorod, are very pretty as viewed from the steamer. They do not, however, as a rule improve in this respect on closer inspection. But, indeed, in every town or village throughout the country the church or churches add much to their picturesque appearance. They are often made more conspicuous by the prevalence of gilt, sometimes entirely covering the large central dome and spire of the building, and they generally occupy the most prominent situations in the town; others, again, have bright blue or green coloured domes, perhaps dotted with gilt points or stars, and often beautiful pictures of saints or Bible scenes are painted outside at the entrance to the building. The churches, too, have very fine peals of bells of a size rarely seen in other countries, and of exceedingly sweet tone. To a West European eye, however, all this bright colouring, and the general construction of the building, with its dome and surrounding minarets, seem more oriental than occidental.

The great fair was going on when I was at Nijni Novgorod, and like everyone else who has visited it of late years, I was disappointed with it. From this point my travels lay through the larger central cities of the Empire, which are too well known to require mention.

Very great has been the interest to me of seeing this country and its various types of inhabitants, and I cannot be too thankful that I utilised the last three months of my sojourn in the country to travel about as much as possible. The Caucasus alone richly

repays the trouble and expense of a visit. I have seen many parts of the globe-from the East to the West Indies, from America to the borders of the Celestial Empire, from South Africa to Russia-and on the whole, for charm and beauty of nature and for interesting variety of races, I give the palm to the Caucasus. Of the strange medley of costumes which the world's panorama reveals, I think none exceed in picturesque quaintness, at once becoming and exceedingly convenient, the dress of the majority of the inhabitants of the Caucasus, commonly called the Circassian costume.' Having worn it in the country itself, riding, walking, and mountain climbing, I may claim to have tested its convenience.

Heartily do I advise anyone to whom it falls, not to lose the opportunity of visiting this part of the dominions of the Tsar of all the Russias.

192

THE COUNTESS RADNA.

BY W. E. NORRIS,

AUTHOR OF MATRIMONY,' 'HEAPS OF MONEY,' ETC.

CHAPTER V.

PEGGY ROWLEY.

IF Douglas Colborne had known a little more than he did about the woman whom he loved, he would probably have been less elated than he was by her parting words. Dr. Schott could have told him, and Bickenbach could have told him (only she would not have done so), that the Countess Radna never willingly parted with an admirer, that she was quite as greedy of admiration as the rest of her sex, and that, although the kindness of her own heart would not permit her to deliberately break the heart of a fellow-creature, experience had rendered her absolutely sceptical as to the fragility of that organ. They might have added that she had taken a fancy to the young Englishman, that psychological studies always possessed a certain fascination for her, and that Luchon is not quite the liveliest place in Europe. But of course he knew no more about her than that he loved her with all his heart and soul-which seemed to be enough.

He was a simple-minded fellow (which really is not the same thing as being a fool, though nine people out of ten think that it is), and his simplicity very often led him to conclusions which, for wisdom and accuracy, were equal to any that Solomon himself could have formulated. Since, for his weal or woe, he loved this Hungarian Countess as it is only given to mortals to love once during their sojourn here below, and since she had plainly invited him to join her in the south before the end of the summer, one thing at least was evident, whatever else might be doubtful, namely, that he must so frame his plans as to respond to her invitation. A good many other things were, of course, doubtful; but it was better that some of them should be so than that they should have been placed beyond doubt in the sense which he had anticipated before his visit to the Avenue Friedland; while, as for the remainder-well, they were hardly ripe for consideration yet.

Thus he mused as he made his way towards the hotel where he was staying; and certain further cogitations and vain imaginings, upon which it is needless to dwell, had made him quite cheerful by the time that he reached his destination, where a letter from his mother was awaiting him. Mrs. Colborne wrote such a vast number of letters every day that it would have been a matter of physical impossibility for her to make any of them lengthy on the other hand her missives were usually to the point and invariably pleasant. This one was quite pleasant as regarded diction, notwithstanding its somewhat reproving tone. The writer gave her son to understand that he had dallied long enough in Capua, and ought now to return without delay to the special duties and pleasures assigned to him by Heaven. 'Besides,' was her last sentence, 'I have something important to tell you about; so please telegraph to say by what train you will

arrive.'

Mrs. Colborne received her telegram and, not many hours after it had been delivered to her, had the additional pleasure of receiving her son. He was a very obedient and satisfactory sort of son, as sons go, and she had never had any reason to be seriously displeased with him. Nor, for the matter of that, had he ever had reason to be seriously displeased with her, although she and he were not altogether in sympathy with each other.

Everybody who has had the opportunity of doing so must have noticed the sympathy between mothers and sons which is so common as to be almost universal in France, and so rare as to be almost phenomenal in our own country. Perhaps we are a more independent race than our neighbours across the Channel, and perhaps independence may have its drawbacks as well as its advantages. In any case, the very last thing that Douglas Colborne would have thought of doing would have been to confide to his mother the fact that he had fallen desperately in love with a foreign countess. He had nothing so startling as that to say to her when he reached Stoke Leighton, the pleasant and desirable looking estate, situated on the borders of Berkshire and Buckinghamshire, which now owned him as its sole lord. There had been Colbornes at Stoke Leighton for many generations, and if the Colbornes of years gone by had been wealthier people than their present representative, the fault did not lie with him. Free trade was to blame for the change; the extravagance of some ancestors and the carelessness of others were also to blame; but

it was not Douglas Colborne's habit to blame anybody, and the sight of the old red-brick house which he loved aroused no other feelings in his heart than those which the sight of home ought always to arouse in the breasts of honest folks. He was not rich; but then he did not particularly covet riches, hoping only that, by dint of thrift and management, he might be able to live in accordance with hereditary traditions. To accomplish that much was, from a pecuniary point of view, the summit of his ambition.

Mrs. Colborne may possibly and excusably have aspired to something a little more pretentious than that on his behalf. In fact, she hastened to assure him that she did, after she had poured out a cup of tea for him in her boudoir and had listened complacently to his declared conviction that there was no country like England, after all.

6

'There is no harm in seeing other countries and other people,' said she, with a fine toleration, and I hope you will continue to make excursions abroad every now and then, like the rest of the world; but of course your chief interest will have to be in your career; and, what with cricket and hunting and shooting and the terrible length to which Parliamentary sessions run in these days, I am afraid you will never be able to absent yourself for more than

a week or two at a time.'

Mrs. Colborne was a small alert woman, who had once been pretty and was still quite nice-looking, in spite of her grey hair. She had charming manners, she was universally popular, she had a keen, if somewhat restricted, sense of duty, and it had been her consistent endeavour to deserve the reputation which she enjoyed as the best of wives and mothers. Her late husband, a heavy, inert personage, had sometimes complained feebly of her superabundant energy, but nobody had ever thought of attaching importance to the complaints of the late Mr. Colborne. It was generally and very justly recognised that nothing except his wife's energy had preserved him from drifting into bankruptcy.

'Oh, the Parliamentary sessions, eh?' said her son, smiling. 'Does that mean that I am to be pitchforked into Parliament?'

'Well, I hope so: it was on account of that that I telegraphed to you. Poor old Mr. Majendie has had another bad attack of gout, and has at last announced that he doesn't intend to seek reelection. So, you see, it is really important that you should be upon the spot and ready to come forward.'