"Why Miss Widow?"
"Because her husband died at their wedding supper. If you have recovered, I will tell you her history. There was a rich, childless bachelor, Kolchanovski de Kolchanovo, a noble of the Ukraine. He had immensely honorable relatives who hoped to be his heirs, and an immeasurably short neck, which gave the greater hopes to the heirs. I knew those heirs. They were in truth perfectly honorable people; but what's to be done? The most honorable and the least interested of them could not refrain from looking at Kolchanovski's neck. This annoyed the old man so intensely that out of spite to the family he paid court to a neighbor's daughter, drew up a document, conveyed to her all his property, then married her; after the ceremony there was dancing; at the end of the dancing a supper; at the end of the supper apoplexy killed him on the spot. In that way Madame Helena Kolchanovski became Miss Widow."
"Was that long ago?"
"Three years. At that time she was twenty-two years of age. Since then she might have married twenty-two times; but she doesn't want to marry. People supposed that she was waiting for a prince. It turned out that that was not true; for she fired a prince out a little while ago. Besides I know well that she has no pretensions; the best proof of which is that Pani Kolchanovski lives to this time in close friendship with our well-known, sympathetic, gifted, etc., Eva Adami, who was a friend of hers in the boarding-school."
Hearing this, I just jumped from joy. If that is true, no more of Ostrynski. My beloved, honest Evusia [18] will smooth the way for my acquaintance with Pani Helena.
"Well, then you won't take me to her?" asked I of Ostrynski.
"Decidedly not; if any man wishes to make the acquaintance of any one in the city, why, he will make it," answered Ostrynski; "but because you put me out with Kazia, I do not wish people to say in the present case that I caused— Do I know? Be in good health!" [19]
CHAPTER XII.
I WAS to dine with the Suslovskis, but I wrote them that I couldn't come.