This is an excerpt from the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin's short story "The Queen of Spades":
—Il paraît que monsieur est décidément pour les suivantes?
—Que voulez-vous, madame? Elles sont plus fraîches.["It appears, monsieur, that you decidedly favour the lady's maids."
"Of course, madame; they're fresher."]Society Talk
As you can see, les suivantes has been translated as the lady's maids. I looked in a couple of online English-French dictionaries and none of them had that meaning. All of them said that les suivantes means the following or the next. Is the way they have it in the book, nevertheless, an accurate translation of this phrase or am I just missing something? Could you please back your answer up with some supporting evidence?