CHAPTER XVI
On her return to Petrograd for the winter, my Aunt Cherwachidze took up again her charitable rôle of confidante to her protégés, who overwhelmed her with visits, disputed for her favours or her kind looks, paid court to her, were jealous of each other, even hated each other. One of them, Baroness K…, a very pronounced type of the real Tartar, with waved black hair, great round black eyes, and lips outrageously reddened, came to see her very often. Her showy toilettes, red and yellow, a relic of barbarous times, made one's eyes ache. A big hat, a real lampshade, generally scarlet, completed a toilette of the most doubtful taste.
Her gait was slow, her feet were much turned out; and as she walked, balancing herself on her heels, slowly and deliberately, the chest out and the head thrown back, she looked rather alarming. Her cousins, real, savage Tartars living in their own country, were always threatening to kill her, in order to possess themselves of her fortune which they believed to be immense. Divorced and redivorced, it really was beyond one's comprehension.
She was the terror of my Aunt de Nicolay—to whose charge especially I had been en-
