CHAPTER XX.

_MRS. SCHOLASKIE._

Just how Ivan’s wooing of Katy sped I had no means of knowing except through Jack, who wrote:

“Ivan has been here and gone. I tell you he is the right kind. I took him everywhere and introduced him to everybody, and told them he was an escaped nihilist, and had been disguised as a lady in satins and silks, and as an old woman with a hump on her back and a gray wig. That made him a lion at once and folks stared at him till he got tired and said: ‘Please drop Alex and Sophie and the escaped nihilist. It sounds too much like “escaped convict.” I am an American citizen, or going to be as soon as I can be naturalized.’ So I dropped ’em. What a handsome fellow he is, with manners which take you right off your feet! Where did he get ’em? I wonder. Father likes him. Katy was stiff as a ramrod at first, but she—I did not mean to listen, but I got in a trap where I could not help myself and heard something about a letter she wrote and he never got. After that they made up. Oh, my! I just doubled up to hear the silly talk—and—kisses! Yes, sir! kisses! loud as firecrackers! and Katy such a modest little girl. I wouldn’t have believed it of her!”

After Ivan’s return to New York he made the acquaintance of some influential Russians through whom he secured a tolerably lucrative position and was able to keep his grandmother’s gift intact. He came once to Ridgefield during the summer, and I was struck anew with his appearance as a polished gentleman, with the qualities of a splendid man, and when he said “Katy has promised to be my wife,” I congratulated him most sincerely and felt that Katy had chosen well. Sometime in October there was a quiet wedding at my brother’s. Among the wedding presents was a box within a box sent by Ivan’s grandmother and containing all her diamonds except one ring and a small stick pin. She wrote:

“I am getting too old to wear them. My neck is too wrinkled and my hands too full of veins. They will look better on your bride. Give her my love and an old, cranky woman’s blessing. I’m not pleased with the match. Don’t think I am. You ought to have married in your own sphere and not have turned clerk, or something. What have you done with the money I gave you? There is more where that came from. God bless you and your wife.

YOUR GRANDMOTHER.”

The diamonds were a fortune in themselves, and Katy said she should never wear them, but the next winter, when Ivan and Katy spent several weeks in Washington, I read notes of the beautiful Mrs. Scholaskie and her exquisite diamonds, “heirlooms of her husband’s family,” and concluded Katy had changed her mind.

* * * * *

It is nearly two years since I came from Europe, and a warm May sunshine has tempted me to the seat under the maple tree where Nicol bade me good-by. He is here beside me reading the morning news of the troubles in poor distracted Russia over which war clouds are hanging so darkly. He came last fall—a new Michel, with his eyes wide open and full of the tender, loving light I remembered so well in Nicol’s soft brown eyes. Much of his beard was gone and he looked younger than when he wore the uniform of a gendarme. That life he had left behind him with his old home, which, as he could not sell it to advantage, he had shut up.

“Maybe she will come here with me some time,” he thought. I never shall. He did not ask me _if_ I would marry him, but _when_, and was so persistent and masterful that we were married at Christmas time and went to Washington for a part of the winter.

My father is old, and as he has a good deal of property both in town and in the country, where he has a large farm, he has asked Michel to stay with him and look after his business; so, for the present, we are settled in Ridgefield.

And now, as we sit in the sunshine, Chance lies stretched on the ground between us, his tongue out and breathing as hard as if he had been running miles instead of chasing a neighbor’s cat across the garden to the barn. After we were married Michel wrote for him to be sent by express, with injunctions that he should be well cared for. We both went to New York to meet him as he came from the ship, rather gaunt and sorry-looking and tugging hard at the chain by which he was held. At sight of us he gave a cry between a bark and a howl, and wrenching himself from the man who was holding him, he sprang upon us, putting one paw on my shoulder and one on Michel’s, and looking at us reproachfully, as if asking why he had been made a prisoner. And behind him came Zaidee, to our great surprise.

“You didn’t expect me, I know,” she said, half crying and half laughing; “but I had to come. I went to Siberia and saw Carl, and it wouldn’t do! I tried hard to have it, but no use. I do not think he would steal a penny now, but somehow it wouldn’t do! He said I was ‘airy,’ living so long with old madame. Maybe I am, but I couldn’t stay with him and came back to St. Petersburg and hired out to Mrs. Browne to do the work Alex