“How did you know that?” muttered Sanin, dumfoundered.
“The earth is full of rumours, Dimitri Pavlovitch; but anyway, I know you were quite right, perfectly right, and behaved like a knight. Tell me, was that lady your betrothed?”
Sanin slightly frowned …
“There, I won’t, I won’t,” Maria Nikolaevna hastened to say. “You don’t like it, forgive me, I won’t do it, don’t be angry!” Polozov came in from the next room with a newspaper in his hand. “What do you want? Or is dinner ready?”
“Dinner’ll be ready directly, but just see what I’ve read in the Northern Bee … Prince Gromoboy is dead.”
Maria Nikolaevna raised her head.
“Ah! I wish him the joys of Paradise! He used,” she turned to Sanin, “to fill all my rooms with camellias every February on my birthday. But it wasn’t worth spending the winter in Petersburg for that. He must have been over seventy, I should say?” she said to her husband.
“Yes, he was. They describe his funeral in the paper. All the court were present. And here’s a poem too, of Prince Kovrizhkin’s on the occasion.”
“That’s nice!”
“Shall I read them? The prince calls him the good man of wise counsel.”