Dimitrius laughed, and patted the man kindly on the shoulder.
“Vasho, you are an oracle! How fortunate you are dumb! But your ears are keen,—keep them open!”
Vasho nodded emphatically, and with his right hand touched his forehead and then his feet, signifying that from head to foot he was faithful to duty.
And Dimitrius thereupon went into the drawing-room, there to find Diana seated on a low stool beside his mother’s chair, talking animatedly about their intended visit to Davos Platz. Madame Dimitrius instantly assailed him with the question she had previously started at dinner.
“Féodor, you put me off just now,” she said, “but you really must tell me if you see any change in Diana! Look at her!”—and she put one hand under Diana’s chin and turned her face more up to the light—“Isn’t there a very remarkable alteration in her?”
Dimitrius smiled.
“Well, no!—not a very remarkable one,” he answered, with affected indifference. “A slight one,—certainly for the better. All doctors agree in the opinion that it is only after a month or two in a different climate that one begins to notice an improvement in health and looks——”
“Nonsense!” interrupted his mother, with a slight touch of impatience. “It’s not that sort of thing at all! It’s something quite different!”
“Well, what is it?” laughed Diana. “Dear, kind Madame Dimitrius!—you always see something nice in me!—which is very flattering but which I don’t deserve! You are getting used to my appearance—that’s all!”
“You are both in league against me!” declared the old lady, shaking her head. “Féodor knows and you know that you are quite different!—I mean that you have a different expression—I don’t know what it is——”