But the old noble made a wry face all at once. “That is talk! tfu! Will she accommodate, or will she not? the deuce knows her! She is young; and as she is young, maybe she is ready for everything; but who will give assurance, and for how long? Besides, there is her aunt and that accommodating dead man; when he shouts from under the ground, go and talk with him. As God is true, I esteem people who have acquired property; but when any one has crept out of a cottage, and not a mansion, and pretends that he lived always in palaces, he wants palaces. And so it was with old Bronich. Neither of them was lacking in vanity; the young woman was reared in such a school,—nothing but comfort and abundance. Ignas does not know them in that respect—and you do not. Such a woman as this” (here he pointed to his daughter) “would go to a garret even, once she had given her word; but that other one, she may not go easily.”
“I do not know them,” said Pan Stanislav, “though I have heard various reports; but through good-will for Ignas, I should like to know definitely what to think of them.”
“What to think of them! I have known them a long time, and I, too, do not know much. Well, judging from what Bronich herself says, the women are saints, the most worthy. And pious! Ha! they should be canonized while living! But you see it is this way,—there are women among us who bear God and the commands of faith in their hearts, and there are such, too, who make of our Catholic religion, Catholic amusement; and such talk the loudest, and grow up where no one sowed them. That’s what the case is.”
“Ah, how truly you have spoken!” said Pan Stanislav.
“Well, is it not true?” inquired Zavilovski. “I have seen various things in life; but let us return to the question. Have you any method to make this wild cat accept aid, or not?”
“It is necessary to think of something; but at this moment nothing occurs to me.”
Thereupon Panna Helena Zavilovski, who, occupied with embroidery on canvas, was silent up to that moment as if not hearing the conversation, raised her steel cold eyes suddenly, and said,—
“There is a very simple method.”
The old noble looked at her.
“See, she has found it! What is this simple method?”