And Nina Balatka was prepared to go out into the wilderness.

Karil Zamenoy and his wife were prosperous people, and lived in a comfortable modern house in the New Town.

It stood in a straight street, and at the back of the house there ran another straight street.

This part of the city is very little like that old Prague, which may not be so comfortable, but which, of all cities on the earth, is surely the most picturesque.

Here lived Sophie Zamenoy; and so far up in the world had she mounted, that she had a coach of her own in which to be drawn about the thoroughfares of Prague and its suburbs, and a stout little pair of Bohemian horses--ponies they were called by those who wished to detract somewhat from Madame Zamenoy's position.