nd with noisy benedictions. The
countess was to pass the winter at St. Petersburg, where her son was
to resume his service in the hussars of Grodno. When they were gone,
when the heavy gate which Mavra had opened one beautiful August day
was shut, and the snow fell slowly in large flakes, reflecting the
colors of the prism, it shut out all the outer world from the inmates
of the seignorial mansion.

Mavra returned to her embroidery frame, no longer under the orders of
the good Dacka, but under the capricious, fitful superintendence of a
housekeeper charged in the interval with the workroom department. Life
was not so easy, but what mattered it to Mavra that there should be
more harshness or less kindness? She did not live in the present. Her
waking hours were passed in an innocent ecstasy that wore her away
without suffering. She did not know that this was love. Had she known
it, no amount of prayers or tears would have been enough to expiate
her unpardonable sin. She loved just as flowers blossom; her ideal was
exalted, her dream pure, and she lived upon them. One less chaste
would have died. As for the young count, he had no idea of all this.

The countess came back in the spring, and the house resumed its grand,
hospitable ways. Mavra was profoundly touched to find that her
mistress, far from having forgotten, inquired kindly after her. She
returned to her personal attendance upon the countess with more
devoted fervor than ever. Later on, the young master was to come
back. Dacka conveyed in a mysterious manner that he had something
better to do than to bury himself in the country. In the evening she
confided to the laundress, in interminable whispers, secrets that were
no doubt interesting, but which Mavra made no attempt to overhear,
being by nature and taste discreet and reserved.

On the eve of St. John, when young girls plait crowns of flowers,
which they throw into the river to see if they are to be married
within the year, Mavra went, like the others, to consult fate after
this graceful fashion. She never dreamed of marriage; it was a closed
world to her, into which she had no desire to penetrate; but she would
plait a crown and watch it through the eddies of the capricious
stream. The girls had thrown in their garlands. Mavra's got entangled
in flowers that a young lad of twenty had just flung in. He was a
carpenter. The two crowns whirled round in company, and vanished
together from view at the bend of the