“Ah, how I love her!” she sighed, and tears stood in her eyes. “She does not know, but perhaps one day she may learn.”
“Have you noticed how thoughtful she has been for some time. Is she not in love?” he added in a half-whisper, but immediately regretted the question, which it was too late to withdraw. His aunt started back as if a stone had hit her.
“God forbid!” she cried, making the sign of the Cross. “This sorrow has been spared us. Do not disturb my peace, but confess, as you would to the priest, if you know anything.”
Raisky was annoyed with himself, and made an effort, partially successful, to pacify his aunt.
“I have not noticed anything more than you have. She would hardly be likely to say anything to me that she kept secret from you.”
“Yes, yes, it is true she will say nothing. The pope’s wife knows everything, but she would rather die than betray Vera’s secrets. Her own secrets she scatters for anyone to pick up, but not Vera’s.”
“With whom could she fall in love?” remarked Tatiana Markovna after a silence. “There is no one here.”
Tatiana Markovna shook her head, then went on after a while:--
“There might be the Forester. He is an excellent individual, and has shown an inclination, I notice. He would be certainly an admirable match for Vera, but....”
“She is so strange. Heaven knows how any one would dare, how any man would woo her. He is splendid--well-established and rich. The wood alone yields thousands.”
“Is the Forester young, educated, a man that counts?”
Vassilissa entered and announced Paulina Karpovna.
“The evil one himself has brought her,” grumbled Tatiana Markovna. “Show her in, and be quick with breakfast.”
One evening a thunderstorm was brewing. The black clouds lay entrenched beyond the Volga, and the air was as hot and moist as in a bath-house. Here and there over the fields and roads rose pillars of dust.
In the house Tatiana Markovna sent her household hurrying to close the stove pipes, the doors and the windows. She was not only afraid of a thunderstorm herself, but she was not pleased if her fear was not shared by everybody else--that would be freethinking. So at each flash of lightning everyone must make the sign of the Cross, on pain of being thought a blockhead. She chased Egorka from the ante-room into the servants’ room, because during the approach of the storm he would not stop giggling with the maids.