“You were stretching your mouth in the very face of Madam and the Governor. I saw you. It was done openly, without so much as the interposition of fan or finger. How often have I done it myself!” She chuckled at the thought. “You are bitterly regretting that you ever left St. Petersburg to bury yourself alive in this provincial capital of a republican colony. Is it not so, _ma chère_?” “Perhaps you are right,” admitted the accused, “but it is only because Geoffrey is away. I declare, you people are so amusing.” “Amusing? Then why do you yawn at us?” “Ah! If I were only in Paris! How I hate the English.” “Sh!... Reflect! Madam Grantham is English” (with an upward glance of deviltry), “the Governor, my cousin, is English, I am English, Geoffrey is English, you are—” “No, no! I am not. Not in the very least bone of me. That is why I find you so amusing. You cherish English blood, you boast loudly of your English connections, you cultivate English manners—which God knows thrive without much cultivation—! You emblazon your English coats of arms with their bastard French mottoes, on your carriage doors, your silver plate, your slaves—” “One would think we branded them, to hear you,” interpolated the old lady, with amusement, “but go on—go on. Let us have the full extent of the indictment.” “And where is Geoffrey now?” continued Geoffrey’s wife; “and where were the Granthams in 1719, in 1749, in 1775? Why, fighting the English for dear life.” “That is more English than anything else,” retorted her cousin-in-law. “What would you have Geoffrey do? Stay at home?” “By no means. I encouraged him to go. But then I thought he would take me with him since he was so absolute of victory.” “Take you with him? On board a privateer?” “There were other modes of transportation.” “My dear child! He could not be willing to have you exposed to danger.” “Ah!—so he said.” “Surely you do not blame him for that? Why do you not amuse yourself in his absence?” “With whom, pray?” “If the gallants of the city could but hear you!” “Perhaps I would endeavor to find amusement in any other place than this. Truly I am dazed with ennui.” “I know, I know! I have not lived elsewhere myself for nothing. These ridiculous provincials forget that the Nevsky Prospekt and the Boulevards were ancient ways when King and Queen streets were Indian trails and the Battery a sandbank.” She gazed into the glowing fire and fell into a retrospection; the path of memory led from the past to the present, so she said after a time: “I heard something to-day that may interest you.” “I thought there was scandal in the wag of your turban, and gossip in the tap of your cane.” “Oh, you did? Well, you are an impudent baggage, madam. This is neither the one nor the other, yet, inasmuch as recounted to an indiscreet ear it might cause both, I think I should not repeat it.”