“Maybe; but believe me, even if we perish, we will not so much as stretch out a finger that you might save us!”
“Pride again! This awful pride! But listen, Mariana, listen to me,” she added, suddenly changing her tone. She wanted to draw Mariana nearer to herself, but the latter stepped back a pace. “Ecoutez-moi, je vous en conjure! After all, I am not so old nor so stupid that it should be impossible for us to understand each other! Je ne suis pas une encroûtée. I was even considered a republican as a girl ... no less than you. Listen, I won’t pretend that I ever had any motherly feeling towards you ... and it is not in your nature to complain of that.... But I always felt, and feel now, that I owed certain duties towards you, and I have always endeavoured to fulfil them. Perhaps the match I had in my mind for you, for which both Boris Andraevitch and I would have been ready to make any sacrifice ... may not have been fully in accordance with your ideas ... but in the bottom of my heart—”
Mariana looked at Valentina Mihailovna, at her wonderful eyes, her slightly painted lips, at her white hands, the parted fingers adorned with rings, which the elegant lady so energetically pressed against the bodice of her silk dress.... Suddenly she interrupted her.
“Did you say a match, Valentina Mihailovna? Do you call that heartless, vulgar friend of yours, Mr. Kollomietzev, ‘a match?’”
Valentina Mihailovna took her fingers from her bodice. “Yes, Mariana Vikentievna! I am speaking of that cultured, excellent young man, Mr. Kollomietzev, who would make a wife happy and whom only a mad-woman could refuse! Yes, only a mad-woman!”
“What can I do, ma tante? It seems that I am mad!”
“Have you anything serious against him?”
“Nothing whatever. I simply despise him.”
Valentina Mihailovna shook her head impatiently and dropped into her chair again.
“Let us leave him. Retournons à nos moutons. And so you love Mr. Nejdanov?”