that their brother Stephen
(whom they called Etienne, and who had been two years at the College of
Cadets) had now received his commission. Whenever she spoke of him,
and more particularly when she told me that he had flouted his
mother's wishes by entering the Hussars, she assumed a nervous air,
and immediately her sisters, sitting there in silence, also assumed
a nervous air. When, again, she spoke of my grandmother's death, she
assumed a MOURNFUL air, and immediately the others all did the same.
Finally, when she recalled how I had once struck St. Jerome and been
expelled from the room, she laughed and showed her bad teeth, and
immediately all the other princesses laughed and showed their bad teeth
too.

Next, the Princess-Mother herself entered--a little dried-up woman, with
a wandering glance and a habit of always looking at somebody else when
she was addressing one. Taking my hand, she raised her own to my lips
for me to kiss it--which otherwise, not supposing it to be necessary, I
should not have done.

"How pleased I am to see you!" she said with her usual clearness of
articulation as she gazed at her daughters. "And how like your mother
you look! Does he not, Lise?"

Lise assented, though I knew for a fact that I did not resemble my
mother in the least.

"And what a grown-up you have become! My Etienne, you will remember, is
your second cousin. No, not second cousin--what is it, Lise? My mother
was Barbara Dimitrievna, daughter of Dimitri Nicolaevitch, and your
grandmother was Natalia Nicolaevna."

"Then he is our THIRD cousin, Mamma," said the eldest girl.

"Oh, how you always confuse me!" was her mother's angry reply. "Not
third cousin, but COUSIN GERMAN--that is your relationship to Etienne.
He is an officer now. Did you know it? It is not well that he should
have his own way too much. You young men need keeping in hand, or--!
Well, you are not vexed because your old aunt tells you the plain truth?
I always kept Etienne strictly in hand, for I found it necessary to do
so."

"Yes, that is how our relationship stands," she went on. "Prince Ivan
Ivanovitch is my uncle, and your late mother's uncle also. Consequently
I must have been your mother's first cousin--no, second cousin. Yes,
that is it. Tell me, have you been to call on Prince Ivan yet?"

I said no, but that I was just going to.

"Ah, is it possible?" she cried. "Why, you ought to have paid him the
first call of all! Surely you know that h