“I have loved too—perhaps more deeply than yourself; I, too, have suffered, I, too, have lost my exalted ideals and seen them levelled with the earth; and therefore who can blame me now—and, above all, can you blame me now,—if I consider a marriage with the prince to be the one saving, the one essential move left to you in your present position”?
Zina listened to this long declamation with surprise. She knew well that her mother never adopted this tone without good reason. However this last and unexpected conclusion fairly amazed her.
“You don't mean to say you seriously entertain the idea of marrying me to this prince?” she cried bewildered, and gazing at her mother almost with alarm; “that this is no mere idea, no project, no flighty inspiration, but your deliberate intention? I have guessed right, then? And pray, how is this marriage going to save me? and why is it essential to me in my present position? And—and what has all this to do with what you have been talking about?——I cannot understand you, mother,—not a bit!”
“And I can't understand, angel mine, how you cannot see the connection of it all!” cried Maria Alexandrovna, in her turn. “In the first place, you would pass into new society, into a new world. You would leave for ever this loathsome little town, so full of sad memories for you; where you meet neither friends nor kindness; where they have bullied and maligned you; where all these—these magpies hate you because you are good looking! You could go abroad this very spring, to Italy, Switzerland, Spain!—to Spain, Zina, where the Alhambra is, and where the Guadalquiver flows—no wretched little stream like this of ours!”
“But, one moment, mother; you talk as though I were married already, or at least as if the prince had made me an offer!”
“Oh, no—oh dear, no! don't bother yourself about that, my angel! I know what I'm talking about! Let me proceed. I've said my ‘firstly;’ now, then, for my ‘secondly!’ I understand, dear child, with what loathing you would give your hand to that Mosgliakoff!——”
“I know, without your telling me so, that I shall never be his wife!” cried Zina, angrily, and with flashing eyes.
“If only you knew, my angel, how I understand and enter into your loathing for him! It is dreadful to vow before the altar that you will love a man whom you cannot love—how dreadful to belong to one whom you cannot esteem! And he insists on your love—he only marries you for love. I can see it by the way he looks at you! Why deceive ourselves? I have suffered from the same thing for twenty-five years; your father ruined me—he, so to speak, sucked up my youth! You have seen my tears many a time!——”
“Father's away in the country, don't touch him, please!” said Zina.
“I know you always take his part! Oh, Zina, my very heart trembled within me when I thought to arrange your marriage with Mosgliakoff for financial reasons! I trembled for the consequences. But with the prince it is different, you need not deceive him; you cannot be expected to give him your love, not your love—oh, no! and he is not in a state to ask it of you!”