I shall submit
myself to the matrimonial yoke, which the Count and Countess have
provided for me?" and he began whistling, and danced some steps of the
Mazurka.

"Perhaps you will be refused," said Constantia coldly.

"Refused! Oh, no. The old Prince has already given his consent, and
as for his daughter, she is desperately in love with me. Look at these
moustachios; could anything be more irresistible?" and he glanced in
the glass and twirled them round his fingers; then continuing in a
graver tone, he said, "To tell the sober truth, I cannot say that
I reciprocate. My intended is not at all to my taste. She is nearly
thirty, and so thin, that whenever I look at her, I am reminded of
my old tutor's anatomical sketches. But, thanks to her Parisian
dress-maker, she makes up a tolerably good figure, and looks well in
a Cachemere. Of all things, you know, I wished for a wife with an
imposing appearance, and I don't care about love. I find it's not
fashionable, and only exists in the exalted imagination of poets."

"Surely people are in love with one another sometimes," said the
sister.

"Sometimes," repeated Anielka, inaudibly. The dialogue had painfully
affected her, and she knew not why. Her heart beat quickly, and her
face was flushed, and made her look more lovely than ever.

"Perhaps. Of course we profess to adore every pretty woman," Leon
added abruptly. "But, my dear sister, what a charming ladies' maid you
have!" He approached the corner, where Anielka sat, and bent on her a
coarse familiar smile. Anielka, although a serf, was displeased, and
returned it with a glance full of dignity. But when her eyes rested
on the youth's handsome face, a feeling, which had been gradually and
silently growing in her young and inexperienced heart, predominated
over her pride and displeasure. She wished ardently to recall herself
to Leon's memory, and half unconsciously raised her hand to the little
purse which always hung round her neck. She took from it the rouble he
had given her.

"See!" shouted Leon, "what a droll girl; how proud she is of her
riches! Why, girl, you are a woman of fortune, mistress of a whole
rouble!"

"I hope she came by it honestly," said the old Countess, who at this
moment entered.

At this insinuation, shame and indignation kept Anielka, for a time,
silent. She replaced the money quickly in its purse, with the bitter
thought that the few happy moments which had been so indelibly stamped
upon h