“I trust that your choice will fall on Troubetzkoi,” said my father.
“Or on Vassili,” cried Olga quickly.
I jumped up and embraced her. “It shall not be Katerinowitch, that I promise,” I whispered, kissing the little pink ear that nestled under her fair curls. “He is to be for you!”
Time was to fulfil this prophecy.
As I went round the table, and passed my mother—poor little nervous mother!—I laid my hand on her arm. I noticed that she was trembling all over. Then I summoned up courage and approached my father.
“Father, dear, if you want your little Mura to be happy, you must let her marry Vassili.”
“Never,” cried my father, striking the table with his fist. The soul of the ancient O'Rourke—a demoniacal Irish ancestor of ours whose memory always struck terror to our souls—had awakened in him. I saw Olga and my mother turn pale. Nevertheless I laughed and kissed him again. “If I do not marry Vassili, I shall die! And please, father, do not be the Terrible O'Rourke, for you are frightening mother!”
But papa, dominated by the atavistic influence of the O'Rourke, grew even more terrible; and mother was greatly frightened. She sat white and rigid, with scarcely fluttering breath; suddenly in her transparent eyes the pupils floated upward like two misty pale-blue half-moons; she was in the throes of one of her dreaded epileptic seizures.
Then they were all around her, helping her, loosening her dress, fanning her; while I stood aside trembling and woebegone, and the pains in the nape of my neck racked me anew.
I said to myself that my father was hard and wicked, that I should marry Vassili and carry mother off with me, ever so far away!