"Nourish with ingratitude? But, as I think, he owes you no gratitude." Lukash was sincerely indignant.
"How not owe? Could we not have cut him to pieces? Who gave him life? Pani Krepetski once, but a second time our moderation; if he is going to count on it always, tell him that he is mistaken."
"And tell him that he will see Panna Anulka as much as he will see his own ears," added Marek.
"Why should he not see her, then?" finished Yan. "It is not difficult for a man to see his own ears if they are cut from him."
The conversation then ended. The brothers repeated it to Panna Anulka to calm her, which was superfluous, for the lady was not timid by nature. Her fear, too, of the Krepetskis, and especially of Martsian, was measured by her conviction that no danger threatened her in Yedlinka. When, on the day after her arrival at Pan Serafin's, she saw through the window Martsian in feathers, looking like some filthy beast, urged on with whips by the Bukoyemskis, in the first moment of her dreadful surprise, which was mixed with amazement and even compassion, she conceived so much confidence in the power of the brothers, that she could not even imagine how any one could avoid fearing them. Martsian passed for a terrible person and a fighter, and see what they did with him. It is true that Yatsek in his time had cut up all those brothers, but Yatsek in her eyes had grown now beyond common estimate altogether, and in general he appeared to her before the last parting from a side so mysterious that she did not know with what measure to esteem him. The remarks which were made about him by the Bukoyemskis themselves, and Pan Serafin, with the words of the priest, who spoke of him oftenest, confirmed in her only wonder for that friend of her childhood, who had been so near to her once, but was now so remote and so different. These accounts fixed in her that longing, and that still sweeter feeling toward Yatsek, which, confessed to the priest in a moment of excitement, she concealed again in the depth of her heart, as a pearl is concealed in a mussel shell.
With all this she had in her soul a conviction, unshaken by anything, that she must meet him, and that she would meet him even in the near future. She had torn herself from the house of the Krepetskis; she felt above her the powerful hands of well-wishing people; hence that certainty became the joy and the root of her existence. It restored to her health with contentment, and she bloomed afresh, as a flower blooms in springtime. That Yedlinka mansion which had been hitherto so serious was now bright from her presence. She had taken possession of Pani Dzvonkovski, of Pan Serafin, and the Bukoyemskis. The whole house was filled with her, and wherever she showed her little confident nose and her young, gladsome eyes, delight and smiles followed. But she feared Father Voynovski a little, since it seemed to her that he held in his hand her fate and also Yatsek's. Hence she looked upon him with a certain submissiveness. But with his compassionate heart, which in general was as wax for all God's creation, he loved her sincerely, and besides, when he learned to know her more closely, he esteemed her pure spirit increasingly, though at times he called her a jaybird and a squirrel, because, as he said, she was this moment here and the next in another place.
After that first confession they spoke no further of Yatsek, just as if they had agreed not to do so; both felt it too delicate a matter. Pan Serafin made no mention of Yatsek to her in the presence of people, but when no one was with them he was not ceremonious on that point; and once, when she asked if he would meet his son quickly in Cracow, he answered with a question,--
"And would you not like to meet some one there also?"
He thought that she would wind out of it jestingly, but to her bright face came a shade of sadness, and she answered then seriously,--
"I should be glad to beg pardon, as soon as is possible, of any one whom I have injured."