d by two offenders for the folly of a
single hour.

After the night of November 12th, any man in Petersburg could gain
audience of Mademoiselle Dravikine more easily than the one man whom
Mademoiselle Dravikine cared to see. Nathalie, indeed, made herself
miserable enough over the situation to have warmed Ivan's heart, could
he have known the fact. Her longed-for world--that wonder-land of which
she had dreamed so long, for which she had been so assiduously prepared,
was not wonderful to her now. To her eyes, the gilding over the iron
bars was very thin: the perfumed padding on the stone walls but a poor
disguise of their chill impenetrability. Nor could she find in her guide
and mentor--that mother, whom she so little knew,--either comfort or
refuge in her unhappiness. Madame Dravikine, indeed, was disgusted and
disappointed. The tale of Ivan's mad devotion and of her daughter's
imprudence, had spread through the city, losing nothing in the telling.
And Nathalie's open stubbornness and rebellion confirmed it only too
clearly. To her mother's mind, Nathalie was behaving in an imbecile
fashion. Suppose _she_ had acted in such a way, when, as Mademoiselle
Blashkov of Moscow, she had been besieged by a handsome, impecunious
young officer; and, instead of throwing him over for the wealthy young
Count Dravikine, had capped her sister's black marriage by one wildly
improvident? Besides, she was not without serious plans with regard to
her daughter, even in these first weeks of her first season. But no plan
seemed possible of fulfilment when, night after night, Nathalie would
make a dutiful, dejected appearance in some fashionable _salon_, and
would sit, drooping and visibly wretched, wherever she was put, unless,
by some unlucky chance, she caught a glimpse of the white and gold of
Ivan's uniform. Then her sudden wild vivacity would fill her mother with
helpless rage; and she would wait and watch, while a roomful smiled, and
the rows of diamond-laden dowagers shook their heads and lifted their
eyebrows solemnly towards the oblivious girl, whom no sarcastic comment,
no openly insulting interpretation of her open preference, could,
apparently, make her understand the importance of a union of family and
fortune in the bridegroom of Mademoiselle Dravikine. Moreover, it would
sound really incredible were one to make a positive statement of the
number of nights throughout which this silly child lay sobbing, in the
kindly darkness o