Her chin in the air, holding up her eye-glasses with her hand, she scrutinized all the pictures with a critical, disdainful air.
"Ah! truly it is the Princess Gulof," said Mme.

de Lorcy to herself, and turned away to avoid an encounter.

It was at Ostend, three years previous, during the season of the baths, that she had made the acquaintance of the princess; she did not care to renew it.

This haughty, capricious Russian, with whom a chance occurrence at the _table d'hote_ had thrown her into intercourse, had not taken a place among her pleasantest reminiscences.
Princess Gulof was the wife of a governor-general whom she had wedded in second marriage after a long widowhood.

He did not see her often, two or three times a year, that was all.