d was very much befrizzled and pomaded.

"What do you want, Kolia?" Valentina Mihailovna asked. Her voice was as
soft and velvety as her eyes.

"Mamma," the boy began in confusion, "auntie sent me to get some
lilies-of-the-valley for her room.... She hasn't got any--"

Valentina Mihailovna put her hand under her little boy's chin and raised
his pomaded head.

"Tell auntie that she can send to the gardener for flowers. These are
mine. I don't want them to be touched. Tell her that I don't like to
upset my arrangements. Can you repeat what I said?"

"Yes, I can," the boy whispered.

"Well, repeat it then."

"I will say... I will say... that you don't want."

Valentina Mihailovna laughed, and her laugh, too, was soft.

"I see that one can't give you messages as yet. But never mind, tell her
anything you like."

The boy hastily kissed his mother's hand, adorned with rings, and rushed
out of the room.

Valentina Mihailovna looked after him, sighed, walked up to a golden
wire cage, on one side of which a green parrot was carefully holding
on with its beak and claws. She teased it a little with the tip of her
finger, then dropped on to a narrow couch, and picking up a number of
the "Revue des Deux Mondes" from a round carved table, began turning
over its pages.

A respectful cough made her look round. A handsome servant in livery and
a white cravat was standing by the door.

"What do you want, Agafon?" she asked in the same soft voice.

"Simion Petrovitch Kollomietzev is here. Shall I show him in?"

"Certainly. And tell Mariana Vikentievna to come to the drawing room."

Valentina Mihailovna threw the "Revue des Deux Mondes" on the table,
raised her eyes upwards as if thinking--a pose which suited her
extremely.

From the languid, though free and easy, way in which Simion Petrovitch
Kollomietzev, a young man of thirty-two, entered the room; from the way
in which he brightened suddenly, bowed slightly to one side, and drew
himself up again gracefully; from the manner in which he spoke, not
too harshly, nor too gently; from the respectful way in which he kissed
Valentina Mihailovna's hand, one could see that the new-comer was not
a mere provincial, an ordinary rich country neighbour, but a St.
Petersburg grandee of the highest society. He was dressed in the latest
English fashion. A corner of the coloured border of his white cambric
pocket handkerchief peeped out of the breast pocket of his tweed coat,
a mon