Russia in 1839 -Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia

112THE HISTORY OF THELENEF.

was deceived this time by the silence of Fedor. She attributed the chagrin of her brother to painful recollections, and fancied that the sight of the scenes where he had suffered, tended to revive his grief; but she still depended on love and fricndslñp to complete the cure of his wound.

On parting with her brother she promised often to come and see him in the cabin of her nurse.

Nevertheless, the last look of Fedor terrified the young maiden; there was something more than grief in this glance; there was the expression of a ferocious joy, blended with some unaccountable solicitude. A fear crossed her mind that he had become mad.

Madness had always inspired her with a terror which appeared to her supernatural, and as she attributed this fear to a presentiment, her superstition augmented her inquietude. When fears assume the shape of prophetic intimations, their influence becomes * indomitable, a vague and fugitive presentiment takes the aspect of an impending destiny, and imagination, thus acted upon, creates what it fears, and by its influence upon intermediate events, realises its own clrimeras.

Several days passed on, during which Thelenef frequently absented himself. Xenie, entirely absorbed in the grief which was caused by the incurable melancholy of Fedor, thought only of him, and saw only her nurse.

One evening, she was sitting reading in the castle, which her father had left in the morning, saying that she was not to expect his return before the morrow : Xenie was accustomed to these journeyings ; for the extent of the domains which her father superintended