success with women; ladies of the highest rank and mature age simply went out of their senses over him. Cautious from habit, silent from motives of prudence, General Ratmirov moved constantly in the highest society, like the busy bee gathering honey even from the least attractive flowers--and without morals, without information of any kind, but with the reputation of being good at business; with an insight into men, and a ready comprehension of the exigencies of the moment, and above all, a never-swerving desire for his own advantage, he saw at last all paths lying open before him.... Litvinov smiled constrainedly, while Irina merely shrugged her shoulders. ‘Well,’ she said in the same cold tone, ‘did you see the Count?’ ‘To be sure I saw him. He told me to remember him to you.’ ‘Ah! is he as imbecile as ever, that patron of yours?’ General Ratmirov made no reply. He only smiled to himself, as though lenient to the over-hastiness of a woman’s judgment. With just such a smile kindly-disposed grown-up people respond to the nonsensical whims of children. ‘Yes,’ Irina went on, ‘the stupidity of your friend the Count is too striking, even when one has seen a good deal of the world.’ ‘You sent me to him yourself,’ muttered the general, and turning to Litvinov he asked him in Russian, ‘Was he getting any benefit from the Baden waters?’ ‘I am in perfect health, I’m thankful to say,’ answered Litvinov. ‘That’s the greatest of blessings,’ pursued the general, with an affable grimace; ‘and indeed one doesn’t, as a rule, come to Baden for the waters; but the waters here are very effectual, _je veux dire, efficaces_; and any one who suffers, as I do for instance, from a nervous cough----’ Irina rose quickly. ‘We will see each other again, Grigory Mihalitch, and I hope soon,’ she said in French, contemptuously cutting short her husband’s speech, ‘but now I must go and dress. That old princess is insufferable with her everlasting _parties de plaisir_, of which nothing comes but boredom.’ ‘You’re hard on every one to-day,’ muttered her husband, and he slipped away into the next room. Litvinov was turning towards the door.... Irina stopped him. ‘You have told me everything,’ she said, ‘but the chief thing you concealed.’ ‘What’s that?’ ‘You are going to be married, I’m told?’ Litvinov blushed up to his ears.... As a fact, he had intentionally not referred to Tanya; but he felt horribly vexed, first, that Irina knew about his marriage, and, secondly, that she had, as it were, convicted him of a desire to conceal it from her. He was completely at a loss what to say, while Irina did not take her eyes off him. ‘Yes, I am going to be married,’ he said at last, and at once withdrew. Ratmirov came back into the room. ‘Well, why aren’t you dressed?’ he asked. ‘You can go alone; my head aches.’ ‘But the princess....’ Irina scanned her husband from head to foot in one look, turned her back upon him, and went away to her boudoir. XIII