“You are very kind; and are you already engaged for the mazurka?”
“I? Let me think ... no, I think I am not.”
“In that case, if you will be so kind, I should like to have the honour....”
“That means that you will go? Very good. Certainly.”
“Bravo!”—exclaimed Ipátoff.—“Well, Vladímir Sergyéitch, you have put us under an obligation. Gavrílo Stepánitch will simply go into raptures. Isn’t that so, Iván Ílitch?”
Iván Ílitch would have preferred to hold his peace, according to his wont, but thought it better to utter a sound of approval.
“What possessed thee,”—said Piótr Alexyéitch an hour later to his sister, as he sat with her in a light two-wheeled cart, which he was driving himself,—“what possessed thee to saddle thyself with that sour-visaged fellow for the mazurka?”
“I have reasons of my own for that,”—replied Nadézhda Alexyéevna.
“What reasons?—permit me to inquire.”
“That’s my secret.”