little tutor or her more vigorous French
maid.

In spite of this conventional training, Nathalie, whose temperament
contained a strong dash of masculinity, was quite eleven years old
before she began to turn her vivid imagination to dreams of distant
debutantism or still remoter officers, who, in the most brilliant of
uniforms, should appear at miraculous moments in her career, bringing
shame and jealousy to armies of ill-mannered rivals. After the first
three months in the Catherine Institute, this style of amusement also
changed, and she was overcome by a religious mania which, being
encouraged on every hand, might possibly have become really dangerous.
It was by finally emerging from it unscathed, and having, at the age of
thirteen years and six months, resolved herself into an agreeably normal
young person whose quiet manners covered a swift and keenly feminine
brain, that Nathalie Dravikine proved herself worthy of her mother's
steel.

This, indeed, Countess Caroline came herself to perceive. After their
long winter's separation, during those few days together in the
sorrowing house of Gregoriev, during the April of 1857, mother and
daughter came closer together than ever before. Madame Dravikine was
softened by grief; and the consolation she found in her daughter's
presence was as great as it was unexpected. Nathalie's tenderness and
gentleness were certainly traits of the Dravikines, rather than of the
Blashkov family. But Caroline, absorbed in memories of her beloved
sister, failed either to analyze these, or to pay much heed to the two
or three brief scenes between her girl and Ivan, which should have been
summarily checked in their infancy. As it was, Mademoiselle Nathalie
gained some relief from gloom and loneliness in the open admiration of
her cousin; and, after the first day of novelty, found herself taking a
quivering delight in this, her first affair.

The little climax of it all, that five minutes on the platform of the
Petersburg station, which ended in a most uncousinly kiss, flamed
scarcely less hot in the memory of the maiden than in that of Ivan.
Nathalie carried back with her into the gray Petersburg Institute such a
host of flagrant dreams as kept a dozen chums about her through the long
twilights of as many afternoons. For the damsel was an erratic priestess
of Eros; and, at this dream-age, she and her comrades gave to the
technique of forthcoming flirtation a patient analysis that promised