‘I am in perfect health, I’m thankful to say,’ answered Litvinov.
‘That’s the greatest of blessings,’ pursued the general, with an affable grimace; ‘and indeed one doesn’t, as a rule, come to Baden for the waters; but the waters here are very effectual, je veux dire, efficaces; and any one who suffers, as I do for instance, from a nervous cough——’
Irina rose quickly. ‘We will see each other again, Grigory Mihalitch, and I hope soon,’ she said in French, contemptuously cutting short her husband’s speech, ‘but now I must go and dress. That old princess is insufferable with her everlasting parties de plaisir, of which nothing comes but boredom.’
‘You’re hard on every one to-day,’ muttered her husband, and he slipped away into the next room.
Litvinov was turning towards the door.... Irina stopped him.
‘You have told me everything,’ she said, ‘but the chief thing you concealed.’
‘What’s that?’
‘You are going to be married, I’m told?’
Litvinov blushed up to his ears.... As a fact, he had intentionally not referred to Tanya; but he felt horribly vexed, first, that Irina knew about his marriage, and, secondly, that she had, as it were, convicted him of a desire to conceal it from her. He was completely at a loss what to say, while Irina did not take her eyes off him.