“Oh, yes, I know! I tell you—the whole town is talking about it! Mrs. Antipova is going to make him stay to dinner—and then she'll just keep him! She's doing it to spite you, my angel. I had a look in at her back premises. Such arrangements, my dear. Knives clattering, people running about for champagne. I tell you what you must do—go and grab him as he comes out from Natalia Dimitrievna's to Antipova's to dinner. He promised you first, he's your guest. Tfu! don't you be laughed at by this brace of chattering magpies—good for nothing baggage, both of them. ‘Procuror's lady,’ indeed! Why, I'm a Colonel's wife. Tfu!—Mais adieu, mon ange. I have my own sledge at the door, or I'd go with you.”
Having got rid of this walking newspaper, Maria Alexandrovna waited a moment, to free herself of a little of her super-abundant agitation. Mrs. Colonel's advice was good and practical. There was no use losing time,—none to lose, in fact. But the greatest difficulty of all was as yet unsettled.
Maria Alexandrovna flew to Zina's room.
Zina was walking up and down, pale, with hands folded and head bent on her bosom: there were tears in her eyes, but Resolve was there too, and sparkled in the glance which she threw on her mother as the latter entered the room. She hastily dried her tears, and a sarcastic smile played on her lips once more.
“Mamma,” she began, anticipating her mother's speech “you have already wasted much of your eloquence over me—too much! But you have not blinded me; I am not a child. To do the work of a sister of mercy, without the slightest call thereto,—to justify one's meanness—meanness proceeding in reality from the purest egotism, by attributing to it noble ends,—all this is a sort of Jesuitism which cannot deceive me. Listen! I repeat, all this could not deceive me, and I wish you to understand that!”
“But, dearest child!” began her mother, in some alarm.
“Be quiet, mamma; have patience, and hear me out. In spite of the full consciousness that all this is pure Jesuitism, and in spite of my full knowledge of the absolutely ignoble character of such an act, I accept your proposition in full,—you hear me—in full; and inform you hereby, that I am ready to marry the prince. More! I am ready to help you to the best of my power in your endeavours to lure the prince into making me an offer. Why do I do this? You need not know that; enough that I have consented. I have consented to the whole thing—to bringing him his boots, to serving him; I will dance for him, that my meanness may be in some sort atoned. I shall do all I possibly can so that he shall never regret that he married me! But in return for my consent I insist upon knowing how you intend to bring the matter about? Since you have spoken so warmly on the subject—I know you!—I am convinced you must have some definite plan of operation in your head. Be frank for once in your life; your candour is the essential condition upon which alone I give my consent. I shall not decide until you have told me what I require!”
Maria Alexandrovna was so surprised by the unexpected conclusion at which Zina arrived, that she stood before the latter some little while, dumb with amazement, and staring at her with all her eyes. Prepared to have to combat the stubborn romanticism of her daughter—whose obstinate nobility of character she always feared,—she had suddenly heard this same daughter consent to all that her mother had required of her.
Consequently, the matter had taken a very different complexion. Her eyes sparkled with delight:
“Zina, Zina!” she cried; “you are my life, my——”