and she laughed insolently. "At any rate you can be frank with him without that shamefacedness with which one man speaks to another of his love. What he is thinking about it to-day—and I was careful to sow the seeds of fruitful contemplation in his mind—all Sofia will be openly talking to-morrow, including your new Russian friends. It was injudicious of you, wasn't it, to leave me such a companion?"
I could endure no more of her taunts, and went out of the room, closing the door quickly to shut out the sound of her mocking laughter. When the carriage was announced I went back to fetch her, and, as if her malicious instinct could always hit upon the mood most exactly calculated to jar upon my nerves, she was now disposed to play the high society dame, and, with all the airs and graces of a capricious beauty, was for delaying me to chatter idle nothings, in a tone of empty frivol, about the weather, the recent ball, and my health, until I cut her short by saying sternly:
"The carriage is waiting for you, Countess, and I have no time for this wearying badinage."
"I thought you might wish your servants to think this was merely a call of ceremony;" and, as if to irritate me with these little peltings of frivolity, she continued to chatter in the same tone until she had taken her seat in the carriage. Then, with a quick change of manner, and a malignant glance at me, she said:
"When we meet again you may find the positions reversed, Count, for I warn you to look to yourself."
I gave no sign of even having heard her, and watched in silence as the carriage drove off.
"There goes our last hope," said Zoiloff, looking moodily after the carriage, as though he would have
