ent, had
observed the prince's solitude and silence, and was anxious to draw him
into the conversation, and so introduce him again to the notice of some
of the important personages.

"Lef Nicolaievitch was a ward of Nicolai Andreevitch Pavlicheff, after
the death of his own parents," he remarked, meeting Ivan Petrovitch's
eye.

"Very happy to meet him, I'm sure," remarked the latter. "I remember
Lef Nicolaievitch well. When General Epanchin introduced us just now,
I recognized you at once, prince. You are very little changed, though
I saw you last as a child of some ten or eleven years old. There was
something in your features, I suppose, that--"

"You saw me as a child!" exclaimed the prince, with surprise.

"Oh! yes, long ago," continued Ivan Petrovitch, "while you were living
with my cousin at Zlatoverhoff. You don't remember me? No, I dare
say you don't; you had some malady at the time, I remember. It was so
serious that I was surprised--"

"No; I remember nothing!" said the prince. A few more words of
explanation followed, words which were spoken without the smallest
excitement by his companion, but which evoked the greatest agitation in
the prince; and it was discovered that two old ladies to whose care the
prince had been left by Pavlicheff, and who lived at Zlatoverhoff, were
also relations of Ivan Petrovitch.

The latter had no idea and could give no information as to why
Pavlicheff had taken so great an interest in the little prince, his
ward.

"In point of fact I don't think I thought much about it," said the old
fellow. He seemed to have a wonderfully good memory, however, for he
told the prince all about the two old ladies, Pavlicheff's cousins, who
had taken care of him, and whom, he declared, he had taken to task
for being too severe with the prince as a small sickly boy--the elder
sister, at least; the younger had been kind, he recollected. They
both now lived in another province, on a small estate left to them by
Pavlicheff. The prince listened to all this with eyes sparkling with
emotion and delight.

He declared with unusual warmth that he would never forgive himself for
having travelled about in the central provinces during these last six
months without having hunted up his two old friends.

He declared, further, that he had intended to go every day, but had
always been prevented by circumstances; but that now he would promise
himself the pleasure--however far it was, he would find them o