The Countess smiled her own grave beautiful smile, and nodded assent; Zinka moved a little closer to her. "Who should understand it better than you?" she whispered. She felt a positive reverence for the Countess, whose kind and tender treatment of her she could not but regard as a special mark of favour and distinction. The childlike deference of her manner towards the elder lady was very graceful and very winning. "If--if the good God should grant me a son," she whispered more softly still, and with a deeper blush, "I should like to learn from you how to educate him." Countess Wjera laid her hand kindly on Zinka's shoulder. "Your husband will be a better teacher there than I can be; that Ossi is what he is is due to the grace of God,--not to me." "And is it by God's grace alone, that Ossi has preserved so profound and filial a veneration for his mother?" The Countess took her hand from Zinka's shoulder; the younger woman, startled, gazed into her face. "It is nothing," said Wjera, with a forced smile, "a pain in my heart--it will soon pass." Mimi Dey, with Pistasch, was approaching the corner where the Countess and Zinka were sitting, and noticing Wjera's sudden pallor, inquired as to its cause, instantly vaunting the merits of a certain specific, in which she had implicit confidence. As soon as Fraeulein Klette observed that the conversation was taking a medical turn, she too joined the group. "Wjera, I know a wonderful remedy; a Swiss physician, gave me the prescription,--it really will cure everything,--everything." "From scrofula to 'despised love,'" added Pistasch. He knew the famous prescription well, and knew, too, that it was the basis of one of Fraeulein Klette's numerous financial man[oe]uvres. "It really is an extraordinary remedy, Wjera, and it would do you good, too, Mimi;--it would be the very thing for Zinka I am sure," Fraeulein Klette rattled on. "I have wrought wonders with it. Do let me have a few bottles of it put up for you." "You needn't take that trouble, Carolin," said Pistasch maliciously, "I have two or three quarts of your specific on hand, and it will give me pleasure to supply the ladies." "As you please, I do not insist," said the Fraeulein chagrined; whereupon she drew from her reticule the famous negro's head and with great energy and a very long thread began to embroider a sulphurous gleam on his ebony nose. CHAPTER V. The fierce heat of the day is over, the rays of the westering sun cast mildly gleaming bands of gold here and there amid the pleasing confusion of furniture in the drawing-room, where both coverings and hangings of Flemish stuff made the prevailing colour a dim, cool green.