her, before her
marriage, to face the living world of men and things. At the first court
ball of the season she should be presented to her sovereigns; after
which it would be understood that the charming child was in the
matrimonial market, ready to be knocked down to the highest bidder.

Had her cousin Ivan, who scarcely regarded her presentation in this
harsh and vulgar light, thrilled at the prospect of her first appearance
there, how much more must it mean to the damsel herself, who, in all her
girlish dreams of the freedom of womanhood, had never dared picture the
possibility of such liberty before the event of marriage? During the
coming season there were to be introduced half a dozen other young girls
of her own station, who had even been in her own class at the Institute.
And more than once this true daughter of the world had laughingly
reviewed her possible rivals, either to herself, or to her interested
maid. There were Mademoiselle Cherneskovsky, with her long, skinny neck;
and Alexandra Nikitenko, whose red face and fat figure could not
possibly be forgotten in the good-nature of her disposition, any more
than the immense wealth of the only daughter of the Shulka-Mirskies
could compensate for her thin, colorless hair, and pale, red-rimmed eyes
with their invisible white lashes. Finally, there was Olga Tarentino,
whose blonde stateliness might prove dangerous, so long as she could
keep from a betrayal of her vixenish temper. But pretty Nathalie,
remembering the furious recklessness of this, laughed as she lifted her
golden-framed hand-glass, and accepted, complacently, the ready flattery
of smooth-tongued Antoinette.

Nor, seeing this young girl as she stood, surrounded by her mother, two
maids, and half a dozen adoring serfs, on the evening of November 12th,
in the year 1862, could any one have blamed her, very strongly, for her
gay vanity. Lovelier vision than this surely never graced the somewhat
bare corridors of the labyrinthine Hermitage! For this was the night of
her debut, when Nathalie was to make her first courtesies to royalty.

She was dressed in the prescribed court costume--which was to prove so
trying to the objects of her naughty ridicule. Upon her, the high
kakoshnik, with its jewelled rim, and the floating veil that softened so
beautifully the great weight of her braids, proved startlingly
beautiful. And, with a neck like hers, what more desirable than the
daring decolletage of her white t