ing being that my whole attention was centred upon not
tripping over the carpet. Driving through the fresh air, however--where
at first I muttered and fidgeted about so much that Kuzma, my coachman,
asked me what was the matter--I soon found this feeling pass away,
and began to meditate quietly concerning my love for Sonetchka and her
relations with her mother, which had appeared to me rather strange.
When, afterwards, I told my father that mother and daughter had not
seemed on the best of terms with one another, he said:

"Yes, Madame leads the poor girl an awful life with her meanness. Yet,"
added my father with a greater display of feeling than a man might
naturally conceive for a mere relative, "she used to be such an
original, dear, charming woman! I cannot think what has made her change
so much. By the way, you didn't notice a secretary fellow about, did
you? Fancy a Russian lady having an affaire with a secretary!"

"Yes, I saw him," I replied.

"And was he at least good-looking?"

"No, not at all."

"It is extraordinary!" concluded Papa, with a cough and an irritable
hoist of his shoulder.

"Well, I am in love!" was my secret thought to myself as I drove along
in my drozhki.

XIX. THE KORNAKOFFS

MY second call on the route lay at the Kornakoffs', who lived on the
first floor of a large mansion facing the Arbat. The staircase of
the building looked extremely neat and orderly, yet in no
way luxurious--being lined only with drugget pinned down with
highly-polished brass rods. Nowhere were there any flowers or mirrors to
be seen. The salon, too, with its polished floor, which I traversed
on my way to the drawing-room, was decorated in the same cold, severe,
unostentatious style. Everything in it looked bright and solid, but
not new, and pictures, flower-stands, and articles of bric-a-brac were
wholly absent. In the drawing-room I found some of the young princesses
seated, but seated with the sort of correct, "company" air about them
which gave one the impression that they sat like that only when guests
were expected.

"Mamma will be here presently," the eldest of them said to me as she
seated herself by my side. For the next quarter of an hour, this young
lady entertained me with such an easy flow of small-talk that the
conversation never flagged a moment. Yet somehow she made so patent
the fact that she was just entertaining me that I felt not altogether
pleased. Amongst other things, she told me