you. I too have character. Turn round. Surely that is not false hair that you are wearing?”
“No, Grandmamma. It is my own.”
“Well, well. I do not like the stupid fashions of today. You are very good looking. I should have fallen in love with you if I had been a man. Why do you not get married? It is time now that I was going. I want to walk, yet I always have to ride. Are you still in a bad temper?” she added to the General.
“No, indeed,” rejoined the now mollified General.
“I quite understand that at your time of life—”
“ Cette vieille est tombée en enfance ,” De Griers whispered to me.
“But I want to look round a little,” the old lady added to the General. Will you lend me Alexis Ivanovitch for the purpose?
“As much as you like. But I myself—yes, and Polina and Monsieur de Griers too—we all of us hope to have the pleasure of escorting you.”
“ Mais, madame, cela sera un plaisir ,” De Griers commented with a bewitching smile.
“ ‘ Plaisir ’ indeed! Why, I look upon you as a perfect fool, monsieur.” Then she remarked to the General: “I am not going to let you have any of my money. I must be off to my rooms now, to see what they are like. Afterwards we will look round a little. Lift me up.”
Again the Grandmother was borne aloft and carried down the staircase amid a perfect bevy of followers—the General walking as though he had been hit over the head with a cudgel, and De Griers seeming to be plunged in thought. Endeavouring to be left behind, Mlle. Blanche next