e mode of existence in her father's house was
confusing and unpleasant. Her slight illness did not confine her to her
room. On the contrary, the doctors had prescribed much open-air
exercise, together with early hours. These things not being in the least
in her mother's line of occupations, Mademoiselle Nathalie was driven to
her own resources, and to arrange some sort of programme for herself.
Among the many serfs of the household there was one, Ekaterina
Nicolaievna, who had been her nurse in infancy, and, since the departure
of her demoiselle to the Institute, had become a kind of _charge
d'affaires_ of the serfs' house. Thus the old woman was accustomed,
quite on her own responsibility, to leave the house every morning, some
hours before her ladyship was awake, and betake herself to the various
markets to buy food for the serfs' quarters, stopping, on the way home,
to say her prayers before Our Lady of Kazan, and regaining the
Serghievskaia before the Countess had rung for the first time. These
excursions, of which, as a matter of fact, her mother was ignorant,
Nathalie now joined, and they soon became a delight to the young girl,
who was still child enough to enjoy early morning rising. It was to her
an excitement to find herself abroad in the quiet streets, to study the
men and women hurrying to their work, to watch the quaint sights of the
hour, listen to the hoarse cries of the innumerable basket-vendors, and
stand by, half terrified, half ashamed, while old Ekaterina bargained
and haggled and quarrelled over her regular purchases of fish, _casha_,
buckwheat flour and _kvass_, which was never made in the Dravikine
household, but bought by each servant for himself out of the inevitable
"tea-money."

On a certain morning in April, a few days before Easter, all the street
merchants were abroad unusually early, and in great numbers. Two days
before there had been a thaw; but now the streets were a sheet of
glittering ice, and walking was a precarious business. Nathalie and her
companion, their day's buying over, had just finished their devotions:
which the girl went through with a reverence quite as deep as that of
the old woman. Emerging upon the Nevskiy Prospekt, they had gone but a
few steps from the famous little chapel, when Nathalie felt a light
touch upon her arm, and lifted her eyes to behold a slender figure,
wrapped in a fur-lined military coat, bending before her. As his head
was raised, the young girl ga