“I should think so.  Why, I and my sisters have even been in love with you,” she said, in French.  “But, dear me, how you have altered.  Oh, what a pity I have to go out.  But let us go up again,” she said and stopped hesitatingly.  Then she looked at the clock.  “No, I can’t.  I am going to Kamenskaya’s to attend a mass for the dead.  She is terribly afflicted.”

“Who is this Kamenskaya?”

“Have you not heard?  Her son was killed in a duel.  He fought Posen.  He was the only son.  Terrible I The mother is very much afflicted.”

“Yes.  I have heard of it.”

“No, I had better go, and you must come again, to-night or to-morrow,” she said, and went to the door with quick, light steps.

“I cannot come to-night,” he said, going out after her; “but I have a request to make you,” and he looked at the pair of bays that were drawing up to the front door.

“What is this?”

“This is a letter from aunt to you,” said Nekhludoff, handing her a narrow envelope, with a large crest.  “You’ll find all about it in there.”

“I know Countess Katerina Ivanovna thinks I have some influence with my husband in business matters.  She is mistaken.  I can do nothing and do not like to interfere.  But, of course, for you I am willing to be false to my principle.  What is this business about?” she said, searching in vain for her pocket with her little black gloved hand.

“There is a girl imprisoned in the fortress, and she is ill and innocent.”

“What is her name?”

“Lydia Shoustova.  It’s in the note.”

“All right; I’ll see what I can do,” she said, and lightly jumped into her little, softly upholstered, open carriage, its brightly-varnished splash-guards glistening in the sunshine, and opened her parasol.  The footman got on the box and gave the coachman a sign.  The carriage moved, but at that moment she touched the coachman with her parasol and the slim-legged beauties, the bay mares, stopped, bending their beautiful necks and stepping from foot to foot.

“But you must come, only, please, without interested motives,” and she looked at him with a smile, the force of which she well knew, and, as if the performance over and she were drawing the curtain, she dropped the veil over her face again.  “All right,” and she again touched the coachman.

Nekhludoff raised his hat, and the well-bred bays, slightly snorting, set off, their shoes clattering on the pavement, and the carriage rolled quickly and smoothly on its new rubber tyres, giving a jump only now and then over some unevenness of the road.

CHAPTER XVI.

AN UP-TO-DATE SENATOR.

When Nekhludoff remembered the smiles that had passed between him and Mariette, he shook his head.

“You have hardly time to turn round before you are again drawn into this life,” he thought, feeling that discord and those doubts which the necessity to curry favour from people he did not esteem caused.