de her real
motive, by giving a brief description of Nathalie's wedding, and then
introducing the delicate topic by uttering fervent thanks that her
princess-daughter should have been preserved from marriage with that
infamous creature--Sophia's son!

Old Princess Shulka-Mirski had lived long in the world; and reading
between lines becomes to some women as much second-nature as calculating
the cost of a neighbor's gown. Madame Dravikine, then, had been shaken
by the news. Although it was plain that she should always resent any
accusation of him: probably even references to his name, in her
presence, she had still not been able to refrain from inquiring after
his physical health. And the reader guessed how she longed for full news
of him; his reception of his disgrace; his attitude towards the world;
his present whereabouts; and his plans for the future. In her own mind,
the old noblewoman wondered how much of Caroline's odd letter had been
prompted by the mental condition of Caroline's daughter. But she had the
grace not to repeat this mental query aloud, in her world. As for
others' thoughts--well, why should the ecstatic young bride, full of the
delight of her title and the Feodoreff sapphires, take the least
interest in the fate of a miscreant with whom, in the period of his
success, she had indulged in an ephemeral flirtation?

Thus for nine days more they chattered. And then, as Tsarskoe-Selo
filled, and the Nikitenko divorce proceedings came thundering down the
broad corridor of scandal, Ivan Gregoriev, his youth, success, trial,
disgrace and disinheritance, melted away into the utter oblivion of the
twice-told, the old, and the stale.

Ah! Could Ivan himself have gained something of indifference! Could his
senses, his jangled, shattered nerves, his bruised and bleeding pride,
have acquired that callousness of stupidity, how well would it have been
with him! But Ivan was Ivan still: high-strung, keenly apperceptive and
receptive; his spiritual, like his physical, nerves, alive to every
emotion, every pain or pleasure that rose up into his present. Only to a
certain natural extent had he changed. The sudden violent revolutions of
his wheel of life, had strengthened his character, though they had
temporarily shocked both mind and body. His mental state, during the
weeks immediately succeeding his change of residence, was one of blank
depression. The hand of inheritance lay heavy on him now. The
hypersensitiveness