“Oi, thou, thou, future heiress!”
But in the evening she said to Pan Ignas,—
“Be not astonished if I so mix up in everything, but I am your mamma. So mamma is immensely curious to know what kind of ring you are preparing for Nitechka? It will be something beautiful, of course. There will be so many people at the betrothal. And, besides, you have no idea what a fastidious girl! She is so æsthetic even in trifles; and she has her own taste, but what a taste! ho, ho!”
“I should like,” answered Pan Ignas, “the stones to be of colors denoting faith, hope, and love, for in her is my faith, my hope, and my love.”
“A very pretty idea! have you said this to Nitechka? Do you know what? Let there be a pearl in the middle, as a sign that she is a pearl. Symbols are in fashion now. Have I told you that Pan Svirski, when he gave her lessons, called her ‘La Perla’? Ah, yes, I did. You do not know Pan Svirski? He, too—Yozio Osnovski told me that he would come to-morrow. Well, then, a sapphire, a ruby, an emerald, and in the middle a pearl? Oh, yes! Pan Svirski, too—Will you be at the funeral?”
“Whose funeral?”
“Pan Bukatski’s. Yozio Osnovski told me that Pan Svirski brought home his body.”
“I did not know him; I have never seen him in my life.”
“That is better; Nitechka would prefer that you had not known him. God in His mercy forgive him in spite of this,—that for me he was never a sympathetic person, and Nitechka could not endure him. But the little one will be glad of the ring; and when she is glad, I am glad.”
The “Little One” was glad not only of the ring, but of life in general. The rôle of an affianced assumed for her increasing charm. Beautiful nights came, very clear, during which she and Pan Ignas sat together on the balcony. Nestling up to each other, they looked at the quivering of light on the leaves, or lost their gaze in the silver dust of the Milky Way, and the swarms of stars. From the acacia, growing under the balcony, there rose a strong and intoxicating odor, as from a great censer. Their powers seemed to go to sleep in them; their souls, lulled by silence, turned into clear light, were scattered in some way amidst the depth of night, and were melted into unity with the soft moonlight; and so the two, sitting hand in hand, half in oblivion, half in sleep, lost well-nigh the feeling of separate existence and life, preserving a mere semi-consciousness of some sort of general bliss and general “exaltation of hearts.”