old friends. Calabressa had got himself up very smartly, to produce an
impression on the little Natalushka whom he expected to see. His
military-looking coat was tightly buttoned; he had burnished up the gold
braid of his cap; and as he now ascended the stairs he gathered the ends
of his mustache out of his yellow-white beard and curled them round and
round his fingers and pulled them out straight. He had already assumed a
pleasant smile.

But when he entered the shaded drawing-room, and beheld this figure
before him, all the dancing-master's manner instantly fled from him. He
seemed thunderstruck; he shrunk back a little; his cap fell to the
floor; he could not utter a word.

"Excuse me--excuse me, mademoiselle," he gasped out at length, in his
odd French. "Ah, it is like a ghost--like other years come back--"

He stared at her.

"I am very pleased to see you, sir," said she to him, gently, in
Italian.

"Her voice also--her voice also!" he exclaimed, almost to himself, in
the same tongue. "Signorina, you will forgive me--but--when one sees an
old friend--you are so like--ah, so like--"

"You are speaking of my mother?" the girl said, with her eyes cast down.
"I have been told that I was like her. You knew her, signore?"

Calabressa pulled himself together somewhat. He picked up his cap; he
assumed a more business-like air.