"I am not going home. I think I already told you that the baroness had asked me to come and stay at their place.... The baron is an old school friend of mine, and I shall be glad to see him again! And she is such a charming woman too...."
And again they went on in silence. Mimotchka was struggling with herself, not knowing whether to ask him to come to Kislovodsk or not. If she asks him what reason shall she give for asking him to come, and how will he take it? And if she doesn't ask him he won't come. No, she will ask him, she will ask him. But still she was undecided, and said:
"I wish you would say some verses to me."
"Some verses? Certainly." He plucked a flower from the wayside and began declaiming:
"Elle était belle, si la nuit
Qui dort dans la sombre chapelle," ...
and so on. When he had pronounced the last words with great effect, they had reached the door of the house, where mamma was waiting dinner for Mimotchka, but still she did not ask him to come, to Kislovodsk. She remarked that it was yet early, and that very likely Vava hadn't returned, so they might as well take another turn. Valerian Nicolaevitch offered her his arm, and they went on a little further, then they came back and passed the house on the other side of the way. After a little while Mimotchka spoke, and when they stopped at the door for the third time, and mamma had warmed up the soup on the kerosene stove for the second time, everything that was necessary had been said. He had promised to come to Kislovodsk for a month (that is, for the whole time that she would be there), and she had promised to go out riding with him the first evening they were there. Why did he so hold to it? Well, anyhow it didn't matter? They had made it up.
Both Vava and Mimotchka had passed the time so agreeably at Jeleznovodsk, and liked it so much, that when they came to Kislovodsk they refused to admire anything, but stood out that Jeleznovodsk was a great deal nicer. Vava said that Jeleznovodsk was dark, green, and warm, while Kislovodsk was light, blue, and cold; and Mimotchka said she had a crooked looking-glass, and that her bed was a great deal harder than the one at Jeleznovodsk. Besides this, there were a good many of their Petersburg acquaintances at Kislovodsk—Princess X—-,
with her daughter and niece, General Baraeff, a friend of Spiridon Ivanovitch's, and others besides.... Now they would get sick of them and their gossip, and good-bye to the freedom of Jeleznovodsk!
However, Vava and Mimotchka were soon reassured on that score. The princess seemed hardly to move from her place at the card-table, her daughter had captured a little aide-de-camp with the object of leading him to the altar, her cousin was romantically and hopelessly in love with a very pale and very interesting gentleman, whose wife had run away from him, and who was making a cure at Kislovodsk, while General Baraeff was incessantly after a pretty widow, with whom he intended to go for a trip across the Caucasus. In fact, they all seemed quite taken up with themselves and their own amusements. The young princess and her cousin met Mimotchka and Vava very amiably and with transports of friendliness, but it was clear that they had not the slightest intention of profiting by their society, and were only anxious not to be interfered with in their walks and excursions. And both Mimotchka and Vava breathed freely again. The latter's entire circle of friends had assembled at Kislovodsk, excepting the student, who had gone with the Morozoffs to the Crimea. Vava welcomed them joyfully, and the day after their arrival the whole party undertook the ascent of the Krestoff mountain, the view from which so delighted Vava that in two or three days' time she began to like Kislovodsk better than Jeleznovodsk. And it really was better. Here there were silvery birch-trees, murmuring mountain streams, and, above all, the wonderful pure air, intoxicating and invigorating all who breathed it. And then, here there was more variety, it was more Eastern, more Caucasian.
Mamma accepted with pleasure the princess's offer to occupy the fourth place at her card-table, the former player having left for the Crimea. Vint was one of mamma's passions, and was a great deal more interesting than picquet with the bilious, irritable dignitary from Petersburg.