“Sister, thy partiality blinds thee,”—remarked Véretyeff, in a pompous tone, but still with the same touch of Astákhoff.—“What will Mr. Astákhoff think of thee?—He will regard thee as a rustic.”
“No, indeed,”—Vladímir Sergyéitch was beginning....
“See here, Petrúsha,”—interposed Nadézhda Alexyéevna;—“please show us how a drunken man is utterly unable to get his handkerchief out of his pocket; or no: show us, rather, how a boy catches a fly on the window, and how it buzzes under his fingers.”
“Thou art a regular child,”—replied Véretyeff.
Nevertheless he rose, and stepping to the window, beside which Márya Pávlovna was sitting, he began to pass his hand across the panes, and represent how a small boy catches a fly.
The accuracy with which he imitated its pitiful squeak was really amazing. It seemed as though a live fly were actually struggling under his fingers. Nadézhda Alexyéevna burst out laughing, and gradually every one in the room got to laughing. Márya Pávlovna’s face alone underwent no change, not even her lips quivered. She sat with downcast eyes, but raised them at last, and casting a serious glance at Véretyeff, she muttered through her set teeth:
“What possesses you to make a clown of yourself?”
Véretyeff instantly turned away from the window, and, after standing still for a moment in the middle of the room, he went out on the terrace, and thence into the garden, which had already grown perfectly dark.
“How amusing that Piótr Alexyéitch is!”—exclaimed Egór Kapítonitch, slapping down the seven of trumps with a flourish on some one else’s ace.—“Really, he’s very amusing!”
Nadézhda Alexyéevna rose, and hastily approaching Márya Pávlovna, asked her in an undertone: