"Our august master, the Czar."
"And what is his 'inheritance'?"
"Greece."
"Very good," returned her master. "How well you have learned to read! And can you write too? And so that you need no one to guide your hand, as when you wrote your first letter? Ha, ha! That was a joke!"
Then, turning to Daimona, he said, so that Diabolka should hear:
"Why, you have made quite a lady of her."
"And I mean to make a good Christian of her, too," responded Daimona.
Diabolka, seeming not to hear, went on spelling out her psalm.
"Come forward, Schinko!" Daimona commanded the man standing behind her chair. "Now, have I not selected a good-looking husband for her?"
"Ah! I sent him to you, too, my lady. Is he not a certain 'cousin' of your ward's?"