Her chief mental interest in the watering-place consisted in watching and making theories about the people she did not know.

It was characteristic of Kitty that she always imagined everything in people in the most favorable light possible, especially so in those she did not know.

And now as she made surmises as to who people were, what were their relations to one another, and what they were like, Kitty endowed them with the most marvelous and noble characters, and found confirmation of her idea in her observations.

Of these people the one that attracted her most was a Russian girl who had come to the watering-place with an invalid Russian lady, Madame Stahl, as everyone called her.

Madame Stahl belonged to the highest society, but she was so ill that she could not walk, and only on exceptionally fine days made her appearance at the springs in an invalid carriage.