“Oh, that is true,” said Pan Stanislav; “Pani Osnovski says that she has indeed a bad figure, and that is proof that she has a good one. But, Marynia, I will tell thee something of Pani Osnovski.” Here he bent toward his wife, and whispered, “Knowest what I heard from Kopovski’s lips when I was coming to thee?”
“What was it? Something amusing?”
“Just as one thinks: I heard him say thou to Pani Aneta.”
“Stas!”
“As I love thee, he did. He said to her, ‘Thou art always so.’”
“Maybe he was quoting some other person’s words.”
“I don’t know. Maybe he was; maybe he wasn’t. Besides, they may have been in love sometime.”
“Fi! Be ashamed.”
“Say that to them—or rather to Pani Aneta.”
Marynia, who knew perfectly well that unfaithfulness exists, but looking on it rather as some French literary theory,—she had not even imagined that one might meet such a thing at every step and in practice,—began to look now at Pani Aneta with wonder, and at the same time with the immense curiosity with which honest women look at those who have had boldness to leave the high-road for by-paths. She had too truthful a nature, however, to believe in evil immediately, and she did not; and somehow it would not find a place in her head that really there could be anything between those two, if only because of the unheard-of stupidity of Kopovski. She noticed, however, that they were talking with unusual vivacity.