“Mark Volokov. In this silly place my name is heard with nearly as much terror as if it were Pugachev or Stenka Razin.”
“You are that man?” she said, looking at him with rising curiosity. “You boast of your name, which I have heard before. You shot at Niel Andreevich, and let a couple of dogs loose on an old lady. There are the manifestations of your ‘new strength.’ Go, and don’t be seen here again.”
“Otherwise you will complain to Grandmama?”
“I certainly shall. Good-bye.”
She left the arbour and walked away without listening to his rejoinder. He followed her covetously with his eyes, murmuring as he sprang to the ground a wish that those apples also could be stolen. Vera, for her part, said not a word to her aunt of this meeting, but she confided nevertheless in her friend Natalie Ivanovna after exacting a promise of secrecy.
CHAPTER XIX
After leaving Raisky, Vera listened for a while to make sure he was not following her, and then, pushing the branches of the undergrowth aside with her parasol, made her way by the familiar path to the ruined arbour, whose battered doorway was almost barricaded by the fallen timbers. The steps of the arbour and the planks of the floor had sunk, and rotten planks cracked under her feet. Of its original furniture there was nothing left but two moss-grown benches and a crooked table.
Mark was already in the arbour, and his rifle and huntsman’s bag lay on the table. He held out his hand to Vera, and almost lifted her in over the shattered steps. By way of welcome he merely commented on her lateness.