When Mazeppa had finished his tale, I took my leave of him, and, going straight to the Uspensky Cathedral, offered a candle at the shrine of the Blessed Mother of the Lord for the mercy vouchsafed to Vera, and, through her, to me. And on that same day I received a visitor whom I certainly did not expect to see: Olga Panief.
This girl, be it remembered, had treated me very badly. Before my absence upon the Azof campaign she had professed faithful love for me; yet when I returned I found that she had thrown me over for the chance of being chosen by the Tsar Ivan. This I might have forgiven, seeing that for an ambitious girl the Tsar’s choice is not an opportunity to be lightly put aside. But she had made love with Mazeppa during my absence, upon his own showing, and though she had thrown him over no less than myself, this was nevertheless a crime which I was not prepared to forgive.
Therefore, when I learned that Olga Panief was waiting in the ante-room to see me, I quickly made up my mind that if somehow I could become even with her I would do so. She should yet weep for her treatment of me!
Olga greeted me cordially: we conversed, and she described to me, what I knew already, her nearness to being chosen Tsaritsa.
‘If it had not been for the cat Soltikof,’ said Olga, ‘I should have been chosen! Oh, the cringing, lying, deceitful minx that she is! Kill her for me, Chelminsky; let your sword or your dagger bite well, straight into her heart; or still better, kill her slowly and with much suffering, curse her! I might have been Tsaritsa, but for her!’
‘You might also and more certainly have been the wife of Chelminsky and saved yourself all this trouble and disappointment,’ said I. ‘From all I hear, Olga Panief, you never had any real chance of being chosen by the Tsar: it rested between Vera Kurbatof and Praskovia Soltikof, but you were never so much as considered by the Tsar—oh! do not look so crossly, for I know what I speak of!’
‘It is a lie; but for Soltikof I should have been chosen. Vera Kurbatof, indeed! Even this fool of a Tsar would not marry so great a fool as Vera!’
‘Well, I admit thou art a splendid woman, Olga. If my heart were of the breaking kind, that would have been a deadly blow when thou didst leave Batourin in my absence for the terem of the Tsar, forgetting thy plighted troth to me!’
‘What, the chance to be Tsaritsa, and abandon it because of a word to thee? Thou must think me a fool indeed, Chelminsky!’
‘And what of certain courting with Mazeppa while the lover was away?’