Two years before, the Prince Alexis Mikhailof, betrothed of Natalie Ivanhoff, had been, without explanation or chance of parting word, banished to Siberia under sentence of perpetual exile.  Later had come rumour of his escape, then of death, then of recapture.  Nothing definite could be learned.  When the Princess Helene made her invitation, it was accepted gratefully, hope suggesting that in the New World might be found relief from the torture that was relived in every vibration of the invisible wires that held memory fast to the surroundings in which the terrible impressions, etchers of memory, had their genesis.

They arrived in summer, and found the long log house, with its low ceilings and rude finish, admirably comfortable within.  By aid of the great case of things Rotscheff had brought, it quickly became an abode of luxury.  Thick carpets covered every floor; arras hid the rough walls; books and pictures and handsome ornaments crowded each other; every chair had been designed for comfort as well as elegance; the dining table was hidden beneath finest damask, and glittered with silver and crystal.  It was an unwritten law that every one should dress for dinner; and with the rich curtains hiding the gloomy mountain and the long sweep of cliffs intersected by gorge and gulch, it was easy for the gay congenial band of exiles to forget that they were not eating the delicacies of their French cook and drinking their costly wines in the Old World.

In the daytime the women—­several of the officers’ wives had braved the wilderness—­found much diversion in riding through the dark forests or along the barren cliffs, attended always by an armed guard.  Diego Estenega, the Spanish magnate of the North, whose ranchos adjoined Fort Ross, and who was financially interested in the Russian fur trade, soon became an intimate of the Rotscheff household.  A Californian by birth, he was, nevertheless, a man of modern civilization, travelled, a student, and a keen lover of masculine sports.  Although the most powerful man in the politics of his conservative country, he was an American in appearance and dress.  His cloth or tweed suggested the colorous magnificence of the caballeros as little as did his thin nervous figure and grim pallid intellectual face.  Rotscheff liked him better than any man he had ever met; with the Princess he usually waged war, that lady being clever, quick, and wedded to her own opinions.  For Natalie he felt a sincere friendship at once.  Being a man of keen sympathies and strong impulses, he divined her trouble before he heard her story, and desired to help her.

The Countess Natalie, despite the Governor’s prohibition, was addicted to roving over the cliffs by herself, finding kinship in the sterile crags and futile restlessness of the ocean.  She had learned that although change of scene lightened the burden, only death would release her from herself.

“She will get over it,” said the Princess Helene to Estenega.  “I was in love twice before I met Alex, so I know.  Natalie is so beautiful that some day some man, who will not look in the least like poor Alexis, will make her forget.”