stopping, said, with evident gladsomeness:

"But I talked long with father to-day, long."

"You have done that trick!" answered Irene, indifferently.

Cara stopped as if fixed to the floor. In the careless voice of
her sister she heard irony; she seemed ready for conflict; her
brows contracted suddenly; her eyes were full of sparks. But
Irene, absorbed in reading, was already a good number of steps
away. After a few seconds, Cara vanished behind the door of her
own room and Miss Mary's.

Irene's features, rather meagre and elongated, continued
motionless; her paleness increased their formality. But as time
passed, weariness settled the more deeply on her drooping
eyelids. Whenever she passed a window of the drawing-rooms, the
pin in her hair east quick, sharp gleams in the sunlight.

At last the door of Malvina's room opened and out came Kranitski,
quite different from what he had been at his arrival. His
shoulders were bent; his head drooping; on his cheeks were red
spots; his forehead was greatly wrinkled. He looked as though he
had been weeping a moment before. Even his mustaches were hanging
in woefulness over his carefully shaven chin. Irene stopped, and
with the book in her two hands, which she had dropped, gazed at
the man approaching her. He hastened his step, took her hand, and
said in a low voice and hurriedly:

"I am the most wretched of beings! I was not worthy of such great
happiness as--as--your mother's friendship, so I lose it. Je suis
fini, completement et cruellement fini. I take farewell of you,
Panna Irene--so many years! so many years! I loved you all so
greatly, so heartily. Some people call me a romantic old dreamer.
I am. I suffer. Je souffre horriblement. I wish you every
happiness. Perhaps, we may never meet again. Perhaps, I shall go
to the country. I take farewell of you. So many, so many years! O
Dieu!" His eyelids were red; he was bent more than ever as he
passed out. On Irene's face great alarm appeared.

"It is true, then. It is true!" whispered she. Springing forward
like a bird she passed through the drawing-room, quickly and
silently. Invisible wings bore her toward the closed door of her
mother's room; when entering, her manner was calm and
distinguished, as usual, but her eyes, in which there was anxious
concern, beheld the form of a woman lying in a deep armchair, her
face covered with her hands. Malvina was weeping in silence; her
sobs gave out no sound, they merely sho