Osnovski took the letter and went in the direction of the conservatory, looking at it, and repeating, “Whence do I know this hand?—as if—I know that I have seen this hand.”
In the conservatory he found three young people, sitting under a great arum at a yellow iron table, on which the orchid was standing. Both ladies were painting it in albums. Kopovski, a little behind them, dressed in a white-flannel costume and black stockings, was looking over the shoulders of the young ladies into the albums, smoking meanwhile a slender cigarette, which he had taken from an elegant cigarette-case lying near the flower-pot.
“Good-day!” said Osnovski. “What do you think of my orchids? Splendid, aren’t they? What peculiar flowers they are! Steftsia, here is a letter; ask the company to excuse thee, and read it, for it seems to me that I know the handwriting, but I cannot in any way remember whose it can be.”
Panna Ratkovski opened the letter, and began to read. After a while her face changed; a flame passed over her forehead, then paleness, and again a flame. Osnovski looked at her with curiosity. When she had finished reading, she showed him the signature, and said, with a voice which trembled somewhat,—
“See from whom the letter is.”
“Ah!” said Osnovski, who understood everything at once.
“May I ask thee for a moment’s talk?”
“At once, my child,” answered he, as if with a certain tenderness; “I will serve thee.”
And they went out of the conservatory.
“But they have left us alone for once even,” said Kopovski, naïvely.