to which she had been introduced by the Governor of Tiflis.
She was neither tall nor short, possessed a wealth of raven black hair,
perfect teeth, lustrous black eyes, a smile that would inspire poets and
a voice that was all music and melody. When Count Drentell carried her
off in the face of a hundred admirers, he was considered lucky indeed.
Dimitri never confessed, even to himself, that he regretted his hasty
choice. Louise was as capricious as she was beautiful, as unlettered as
she was charming, as superstitious as she was fascinating. All that she
did was done on impulse. She loved her husband on impulse, she deserted
her child for weeks at a time on impulse, she succored the poor or
neglected them on impulse. Her army of servants set her commands at
defiance, for they knew them to be the outgrowth of momentary caprice.

Fortunately for the domestic happiness of the couple, the Count was with
his command at St. Petersburg during two-thirds of the year, while his
wife enjoyed herself as best she might on his magnificent estate at
Lubny.

Brought up among the highlands of Tiflis, Louise possessed all of the
unreasoning bigotry characteristic of the people inhabiting that region.
She was religious to the very depths of superstition, and she chose
Lubny for a dwelling-place, less for its resemblance to the sunny hills
of her native province than for its proximity to several large Catholic
cloisters for both monks and nuns, whence she hoped to receive that
religious nourishment which her southern and impetuous nature craved. It
was while returning from an expedition to the furthest of these
nunneries, in which she frequently immured herself for weeks at a time,
that she found Jacob upon the road.

The Count, who, with the companions of his youth, had lost what little
religious sentiment he may have once possessed, regarded this trait in
his wife with great disfavor; but neither threats nor prayers effected a
change, and he finally allowed her to follow her own inclinations.

While the union was not one of the happiest, there were fewer
altercations than might have been reasonably expected from the
thoroughly opposite natures of man and wife. Louise, with all her
faults, was a loving wife, and when her husband's temper was ruffled,
her smiles and caresses, her appealing looks and tender glances, won him
back to serenity.

The supper, therefore, was not as gloomy as the stormy introduction
indicated. Both had much