"Oh, mother! what do you take me for?" carelessly replied the young man. "I think of a woman only when she is in a casket suited to her style of beauty. Now here you may have pearls, but the casket is totally wanting."
They burst out laughing together. Only those who thoroughly understood these two beings could have guessed beneath this light talk the strict propriety of the mother and the son's respect for the maternal home. But Russians of the grande monde are so constituted that when they have no vice, they take all imaginable trouble to affect it.
On leaving the dining room the countess and her son directed their steps toward the garden. In front of the house, in the courtyard, they met Mavra stooping under the weight of an enormous pile of linen, which she was carrying from the laundry. The sheets held in under her crossed hands reached so high that she had to raise her chin and turn her head sideways in order to see before her.
"See, there she is," said the countess in French, stopping to look at her.
"It is hard to say whether she is a Raphael or a Greuze," said Serge. "This morning she had more the look of a Raphael, with a Russian nose; it is a hybrid style of beauty, but it has a certain charm."
They continued their walk, while Mavra entered the workroom with her pile of linen; when her hands were free, she stood trembling and silent, as though she had been guilty of a crime.
"Well, what are you waiting for?" said one of the girls, pulling her by the apron.
"I don't know," replied Mavra. "I feel as if I had received a blow, and my hands keep on trembling."
"You carried too heavy a load for your strength. Sit down, and you will see it will pass off."
And in fact it did pass away in a few minutes, but from that moment Mavra was haunted by a pair of black eyes, whose owner little suspected her infatuation.