Explore "A Secret Service" by William Le Queux on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Our final glasses had been clinked; Mademoiselle had crossed herself devoutly before the _ikon_ hanging over the door of the dingy old post-house at Uziansk, at the foot of the Ourals; and in a few moments our sleigh-bells were jingling merrily, and our runners hissing over the frozen snow, as the pretty Russian and myself sped along in the bright moonlight on our journey of over two thousand miles into Siberia. I was on my way to the little town of Lebiázhia, on a secret mission, and was travelling, as usual, with a false passport.
At the last moment I had been asked by my old friend, Paul Cherniávski, lieutenant in the Tzar's Dragoons, to allow a friend of his to travel with me to Irkutsk; and having consented, I had discovered, to my surprise, that his friend-who was introduced to me only a quarter of an hour before as Mademoiselle Mariána Néstoff-was an exceedingly handsome, dark-eyed young lady of about twenty-two.