slowly and thoughtfully.

Vjera cast an imploring look on Dumnoff, as though beseeching him not to
continue his jesting. The rough man, who might have sat for the type of
the Russian mujik, noticed the glance and was silent.

"Who is incredulous enough to disbelieve this time?" asked the Cossack,
gravely. "Besides, the Count says that he has had letters, so it is
certain, at last."

"Love-letters, he means," giggled the insignificant girl, who rejoiced in
the name of Anna Schmigjelskova. Then she looked at Vjera as though afraid
of her displeasure.

But Vjera took no notice of the silly speech and sat idle for some
minutes, gazing at the Count with an expression in which love, admiration
and pity were very oddly mingled. Pale and ill as she looked, there was a
ray of light and a movement of life in her face during those few moments.
Then she took again her glass tube and her bits of paper and resumed her
task of making shells, with a little heave of her thin chest that betrayed
the suppression of a sigh.

The Count finished his second thousand, and arranged the last hundreds
neatly with the others, laying them in little heaps and patting the ends
with his fingers so that they should present an absolutely symmetrical
appearance. Dumnoff plodded on, in his peculiar way, doing the work well
and then carelessly tossing it into a basket by his side. He was capable
of working fourteen hours at a stretch when there was a prospect of
cabbage soup and liquor in the evening. The Cossack cleaned his
cutting-block and his broad swivel knife and emptied the cut tobacco into