“Let the kitten not run so; she will choke.”
And she nestled up to him, pouted, and answered, as if in anger,—
“Hush, Pan Stas!”
Pan Stanislav glanced, however, frequently at the serene face of Pani Emilia, as if desiring to let her know that he wished to converse with her. But there was no opportunity, since she did not like to destroy Litka’s joyousness, and preferred to leave their mutual friend in her possession exclusively. Only after dinner, which they ate in the garden together, amid foliage and the twittering of sparrows, when Vaskovski had begun to tell Litka about birds, and the love which Saint Francis Assisi had felt for them, and the child, with her head on her hand, was lost completely in listening, did Pan Stanislav turn to Pani Emilia and ask,—
“Do you not wish to walk to the end of the garden?”
“I do,” answered she. “Litka, stay here a minute with Pan Vaskovski; we will come back in that time.”
They walked along, and Pani Emilia asked immediately,—
“Well, what?”
Pan Stanislav began to tell; but whether it was that he wished to appear better before Pani Emilia, or that he determined to reckon with that delicate nature, or, finally, that the last thoughts concerning Marynia had attuned him to a note more sensitive than usual, it is sufficient that he changed the affair altogether. He confessed, it is true, to a quarrel with Plavitski, but he was silent touching this, that before his departure from Kremen he had answered Marynia almost with harshness; besides, he did not spare praises on her in his story, and finally he finished,—
“Since that debt became a cause of misunderstanding at once between me and Plavitski,—a thing which must be reflected on Panna Marynia,—I chose to sell it; and just before I left Warsaw, I sold it to Mashko.”