‘No.’
‘She speaks it like a German,’ put in Priemkov.
‘Well, that’s splendid! I will bring you—but there, you shall see what a wonderful thing I will bring you.’
‘Very good, we shall see. But now let us go into the garden, or there’ll be no keeping Natasha still.’
She put on a round straw hat, a child’s hat, just such a one as her daughter was wearing, only a little larger, and we went into the garden. I walked beside her. In the fresh air, in the shade of the tall limes, I thought her face looked sweeter than ever, especially when she turned a little and threw back her head so as to look up at me from under the brim of her hat. If it had not been for Priemkov walking behind us, and the little girl skipping about in front of us, I could really have fancied I was three-and-twenty, instead of thirty-five; and that I was just on the point of starting for Berlin, especially as the garden we were walking in was very much like the garden in Madame Eltsov’s estate. I could not help expressing my feelings to Vera Nikolaevna.
‘Every one tells me that I am very little changed externally,’ she answered, ‘though indeed I have remained just the same inwardly too.’
We came up to a little Chinese summer-house.
‘We had no summer-house like this at Osinovka,’ she said; ‘but you mustn’t mind its being so tumbledown and discoloured: it’s very nice and cool inside.’
We went into the house. I looked round.