y to find out when Mrs.
Shaldin is expected back. They ought to know. They must be getting
things ready against her return--cleaning her bedroom and fixing it
up. Do you understand? But be careful to find out right. And also be
very careful not to let on for whom you are finding it out. Do you
understand?'

"Of course, I understand."

"Well, then, go. But one more thing. Since you're going out, you may
as well stop at Abramka's again and tell him to come here right away.
You understand?"

"But his Excellency gave me orders to stay at home," said Semyonov,
scratching himself behind his ears.

"Please don't answer back. Just do as I tell you. Go on, now."

"At your service." And the orderly, impressed by the lady's severe
military tone, left the room.

Mrs. Zarubkin remained reclining on the sofa for a while. Then she
rose and walked up and down the room and finally went to her bedroom,
where her two little daughters were playing in their nurse's care. She
scolded them a bit and returned to her former place on the couch. Her
every movement betrayed great excitement.

* * * * *

Tatyana Grigoryevna Zarubkin was one of the most looked-up to ladies
of the S---- Regiment and even of the whole town of Chmyrsk, where the
regiment was quartered. To be sure, you hardly could say that, outside
the regiment, the town could boast any ladies at all. There were very
respectable women, decent wives, mothers, daughters and widows of
honourable citizens; but they all dressed in cotton and flannel, and
on high holidays made a show of cheap Cashmere gowns over which they
wore gay shawls with borders of wonderful arabesques. Their hats and
other headgear gave not the faintest evidence of good taste. So they
could scarcely be dubbed "ladies." They were satisfied to be called
"women." Each one of them, almost, had the name of her husband's trade
or position tacked to her name--Mrs. Grocer so-and-so, Mrs. Mayor
so-and-so, Mrs. Milliner so-and-so, etc. Genuine _ladies_ in the
Russian society sense had never come to the town before the
S----Regiment had taken up its quarters there; and it goes without
saying that the ladies of the regiment had nothing in common, and
therefore no intercourse with, the women of the town. They were so
dissimilar that they were like creatures of a different species.

There is no disputing that Tatyana Grigoryevna Zarubkin was one of the
most looked-up-to of the ladies. She