Page:Maud, Renée - One year at the Russian court 1904-1905.djvu/206

180 And what a figure, so Lilliputian. Choked by his high collar, he clasped a shiny tall hat in his hands; a pair of gloves of delicate tint and patent-leather shoes completed the accoutrement of this ridiculous little fop.

The lady was dressed that day in canary yellow up to the waist, a bodice very transparent on all sides, the marble of her little arms delicious under the tissue, and her neck! and her throat! and—luckily my aunt was short-sighted!

It fell to my lot to entertain the little dandy, her son, during the whole of lunch. He embarked on every subject with the same self-possession, and when I asked him how he spent his time, and he had answered me over his high collar in a voice necessarily rather choky, "I occupy myself with sport," I felt myself suffocating with laughter. He had lately been doing a little motoring and was consumed with pride, the little puppet!

She, poor woman, had in the Caucasus a husband who had deserted her for another fair temptress, and wished to divorce her—hence these whisperings, this mystery, these tears when she spoke of him. Was there no virtue then in these round and shapely arms?

I do not at all know how my aunt managed it, but the fact remains that when I left Petrograd, the ex-unfaithful one, too, was always there, and husband and wife seemed like two turtle doves. And more than ever the fine, white gauzes fluttered round the white arms and the short neck, and all her plump little