“So you wanted him to be pleased with the letter that fell out of your pocket?” I asked. “You wanted him to burst out laughing?”
“Don't let us talk about it!” the Count interrupted. “Whatever might have been, his action was dastardly all the same! Women are not treated in that way. I'll challenge him! I'll teach him! Olga Nikolaevna, believe me he'll have to suffer for this!”
The Count gobbled like a young turkey cock, although he had no authority to come between husband and wife. I kept silent and did not contradict him, because I knew that to take vengeance for another man's wife was limited to drunken ebullitions of words between four walls, and that everything about the duel would be forgotten the next day. But why was Olga silent?… I did not wish to think that she was not loth to have the proposed service rendered her by the Count. I did not wish to think that this silly, beautiful cat had so little dignity, that she would willingly consent to the drunken Count being judge between man and wife.
“I'll mix him with the dirt!” piped this newly-fledged knight-errant. “I'll end by boxing his ears! I'll do it to-morrow!”
And she did not stop the mouth of that blackguard, who in his drunken mood was insulting a man whose only blame was that he had made a mistake and was now being duped. Urbenin had seized and pressed her hand very roughly, and this had caused her scandalous flight to the Count's house, and now, when before her eyes this drunken and morally degenerate creature was defaming the honest name and pouring filthy slops on a man, who at that time must have been languishing in melancholy and uncertainty, knowing that he was deceived, she did not even move a hair of her eyebrows!
While the Count was pouring out his wrath and Olga was wiping her eyes, the manservant brought in some roast partridges. The Count put half a partridge on his guest's plate. She shook her head negatively and then mechanically took up her knife and fork and began to eat. The partridge was followed by a large glass of wine, and soon there were no more signs of tears with the exception of red spots near the eyes and occasional deep sighs.
Soon we heard laughter.… Olga laughed like a consoled child who had forgotten its injury. And the Count looking at her laughed too.
“Do you know what I have thought of?” he began, sitting down next to her. “I want to arrange private theatricals. We shall act plays in which there are good women's parts. Eh? What do you say to that?”
They began to talk about the private theatricals. How ill this silly chatter accorded with the terror that had but lately been depicted on Olga's face, when only an hour before she had rushed into the room, pale and weeping, with flowing hair! How cheap were those terrors, those tears!
Meanwhile time went on. The clock struck twelve. Respectable women go to bed at that time. Olga ought to have gone away long since. But the clock struck half-past twelve; it struck one, and she was still sitting there chatting with the Count.