"Yes."
"Only think, Nicki," she went on to Sempaly, "mamma knows her?"
"Who is it that I know?" asked her mother from the other carriage.
"Baroness Wolnitzka, mamma; do you see her--out there?"
"Heaven preserve me!" exclaimed the countess fervently. "I do not feel secure of my life when I am near her. She fell upon me to-day in the Villa Wolkonsky."
"How on earth do you happen to know the old woman, aunt?" asked Sempaly irritably.
"Oh! my husband had some political connection with hers," the countess explained. "She is not to be borne, she stuck to me like a leech for half an hour."
"Your conversation must have been very interesting," said Siegburg.
"It did not interest me," replied the countess rather sharply. "She told me how much her journey had cost her, what she pays a day for carriage-hire, and that when she was young she had singing-lessons of Cicimara. And she chattered endlessly about her sister Sterzl who is living here 'in the first style and knows absolutely none but the crême de la crême'--you laugh!..."
"Well, mamma, you must confess that the association of such a name as Sterzl with the cream of society is irresistibly funny," cried Polyxena.