Ladislaus continued:
"On our departure she said that she knew I was the young lord of Jastrzeb; that she saw me every Sunday in Rzeslewo and gazed upon me as upon some miracle-working painting."
"Ah, you certainly are handsome to the point of nauseousness," interrupted Gronski, with a certain irritation.
"Bah!--I have already three or four gray hairs."
"Surely, from birth. How often did you meet thereafter?"
"Before I left her, I asked her whether she could not slip away the following evening. She answered that she could, because in the evening she always gathered the linen, which was being bleached upon the meadow, for fear that some one might steal it, and that besides, in summer time she did not sleep in the cabin with her parents, but on the hay in the barn. After that we met every day. I had to conceal myself from the night watch, so I slunk out of the window into the garden, though this was an unnecessary precaution, for the watch slept so soundly that one time I carried off the trumpet and staff belonging to one of them. It was amusing also that, seeing Hanka only in the night time, I did not know how she really looked; though in the moonlight she appeared to me to be pretty."
"And in church?"
"Our collator's pew is near the altar, while the girls knelt in the rear. There are so many of the same red and yellow shawls, studded with so many flowers, that it is difficult to distinguish one from the other. At times it seemed to me that I saw her in the distance, but I could not see her perfectly. The vacation soon ended, and when I returned the following season the Skibas were gone."
"Did you bid her farewell?"
"I admit that I did not. I preferred to avoid that."