This girl is one of those women who create a sensation amounting almost to amazement when they appear in society. She is lovely to an almost impossible extent, a brunette with splendid black eyes, a grand figure and divine bust. Her shoulders and arms are like an antique statue; her gait that of an empress. She is a little pale to-day; but her lips, with the gleam of her pearly teeth between them, are things to dream of, if you once get a sight of them. Her expression is severe and serious. Mr. Mosgliakoff is evidently afraid of her intent gaze; at all events, he seems to cower before her when she looks at him. She is very simply dressed, in a white muslin frock—the white suits her admirably. But then, _everything_ suits her! On her finger is a hair ring: it does not look as though the hair was her mother’s, from the colour. Mosgliakoff has never dared to ask her whose hair it is. This morning she seems to be in a peculiarly depressed humour; she appears to be very much preoccupied and silent: but her mother is quite ready to talk enough for both; albeit she glances continually at Zina, as though anxious for her, but timidly, too, as if afraid of her. “I am _so_ pleased, Pavel Alexandrovitch,” she chirps to Mosgliakoff; “_so_ happy, that I feel inclined to cry the news out of the window to every passer-by. Not to speak of the delightful surprise—to both Zina and myself—of seeing you a whole fortnight sooner than we expected you—that, of course, ‘goes without saying’; but I am so, _so_ pleased that you should have brought this dear prince with you. You don’t know how I love that fascinating old man. No, no! You would never believe it. You young people don’t understand this sort of rapture; you never would believe me, assure you as much as ever I pleased. “Don’t you remember, Zina, how much he was to me at that time—six years ago? Why, I was his guide, his sister, his mother! There was something delightfully ingenuous and ennobling in our intimacy—one might say _pastoral_; I don’t know what to call it—it was delightful. That is why the poor dear prince thinks of _my_ house, and only mine, with gratitude, now. Do you know, Pavel Alexandrovitch, perhaps you have _saved_ him by thus bringing him to me? I have thought of him with quaking of heart all these six years—you’d hardly believe it,—and _dreamed_ of him, too. They say that wretch of a woman has bewitched and ruined him; but you’ve got him out of the net at last. We must make the best of our opportunity now, and save him outright. Do tell me again, how did you manage it? Describe your meeting and all in detail; I only heard the chief point of the story just now, and I do so like details. So, he’s still at his toilet table now, is he?—”