"Ei, ei! You are quite a fine young lady, I see. You must sit down and have supper with us. Come, don't be shy! Here, you long-legged fellow, set a cover for the young lady! Here, you lout! Opposite me." "It will be a great honor to your unworthy maid-servant to be permitted to sit at table with you; but I must ask forgiveness if I eat nothing. Good Father Prokop has inflicted the penance on me of eating no supper for a whole year." "For what sin?" The girl heaved a deep sigh. "Your Excellency! you know the great sin I have committed, and for which I never can atone." And she sank her head remorsefully. Was she really penitent, or was it only hypocrisy? "And what do you do while others are having their meal?" "I read the Psalms to them." "What! you can read already? and the Psalms into the bargain! I should like to hear that. Bring her a Psalm-book. Now sit here and read. Which one is it?" The girl, sitting down as she was bid, rested the finger-tip of one hand daintily on the table, while with the forefinger of the other she marked the syllables as she read, "Lord, the hea-then are come in-to thine in-her-i-tance." "Wonderful! But do you understand what you are reading about? Who are the 'heathen'?" "The _Turks_!" The girl spat out the words, as beseems an orthodox Muscovite. "Who is the 'Lord'?" Rising, the girl answered: "Our august master, the Czar." "And what is his 'inheritance'?" "Greece." "Very good," returned her master. "How well you have learned to read! And can you write too? And so that you need no one to guide your hand, as when you wrote your first letter? Ha, ha! That was a joke!" Then, turning to Daimona, he said, so that Diabolka should hear: "Why, you have made quite a lady of her." "And I mean to make a good Christian of her, too," responded Daimona. Diabolka, seeming not to hear, went on spelling out her psalm. "Come forward, Schinko!" Daimona commanded the man standing behind her chair. "Now, have I not selected a good-looking husband for her?" "Ah! I sent him to you, too, my lady. Is he not a certain 'cousin' of your ward's?" "That's why I treat him so well. A fine youth! I have no more faithful servant than he. The peasantry fear him like the very devil. He is my right hand." "Then I can guess how many floggings he has already administered to them." "I will give them their wedding. Then I mean to make Schinko my house-steward and Diabolka my confidential maid." "I will provide the wedding presents." Diabolka continued reading her psalm without interruption. Any other girl at least would have simpered when she heard talk of her wedding in presence of her bridegroom. "Now we'll finish up supper with a little singing and dancing," said the mistress of the house, signing to Schinko. "Ah! Can Diabolka not only sing sacred songs, but dance too?" "She neither sings nor dances; she has another calling. There is some one else to do that."