“I took steps about it, in fact. When he was ‘informed’ that you ‘ruled the province,’ vous savez, he allowed himself to use the expression that ‘there shall be nothing of that sort in the future.’”
“Did he say that?”
“That ‘there shall be nothing of the sort in future,’ and, avec cette morgue.… His wife, Yulia Mihailovna, we shall behold at the end of August, she’s coming straight from Petersburg.”
“From abroad. We met there.”
“Vraiment?”
“In Paris and in Switzerland. She’s related to the Drozdovs.”
“Related! What an extraordinary coincidence! They say she is ambitious and … supposed to have great connections.”
“Nonsense! Connections indeed! She was an old maid without a farthing till she was five-and-forty. But now she’s hooked her Von Lembke, and, of course, her whole object is to push him forward. They’re both intriguers.”
“And they say she’s two years older than he is?”
“Five. Her mother used to wear out her skirts on my doorsteps in Moscow; she used to beg for an invitation to our balls as a favour when my husband was living. And this creature used to sit all night alone in a corner without dancing, with her turquoise fly on her forehead, so that simply from pity I used to have to send her her first partner at two o’clock in the morning. She was five-and-twenty then, and they used to rig her out in short skirts like a little girl. It was improper to have them about at last.”