She stopped, her face wore a vexed, indignant expression. "Why did you do it?" said he, roughly; "it is not becoming."
Instead of losing her self-possession, she laughed heartily. "But, Boris Nikolaivitch," said she, "you speak as if you were a true man of the world. However, as you please, I thank you for the lecture. Adieu!"
And nodding her head quite arrogantly, she was about to turn on her heel, when her look met his. She saw that she had vexed him, remained standing, blushed, and lowered her eyes.
The waters of the Acqua Nigo foamed and sparkled gayly between the edges of the stone basin which Nicolo Salvi had made for them; the noonday church-bells mingled their deep, solemn voices with the caressing rippling of the waves; the sun shone full from the deep-blue, ice-cold heaven, a glaring, unpleasant March sun, which was light without warming, like the condescending smile of a great man, and Natalie's maid who, grumbling and bored, stood a step behind her young mistress, opened a round, green fan to shield her eyes, and at the same time stamped her feet from the cold. Around, the Roman life went on in its usual lazy way. Before a small, loaded cart stood a mule with a number of red and blue tassels about its ears and on its forehead hung a brass image of the Virgin. In the door of a vegetable shop, from which came a strong smell of herbs, crouched a black-eyed, white Spitz dog, that twitched its right ear uneasily. A fat, smooth-headed Capuchin passed by, then came two shabbily dressed young people. The Capuchin stopped to scratch the mule's head, the young people nudged each other, and said in an undertone, while they pointed to the virtuoso: "E Borisso Lensky."
"There you have it," said the princess, shaking off her vexation with a charming, pleasant smile, and her head bent one side. "Great man that you are, and still you take it amiss in me." She said nothing more, only raised her great blue eyes and gave him a look, a never-to-be-forgotten look, behind whose roguishness a riddle was concealed.
"I take nothing amiss in you," said he, earnestly.
"Really nothing? Now, then, I can tell you how much, oh! how much, I have longed to hear you play again, that I, coûte qu'il coûte, seized the opportunity to ask you to stop in Rome on your return from Naples only to--" She hesitated, as if she were suddenly afraid of being indiscreet.
"Only to play something for the Princess Natalie Alexandrovna Assanow," he completed her sentence, laughing. "Good. I will come, Natalie Alexandrovna; in two weeks I am there. But if you are then in Florence or Nice----"
She was about to make a very positive assertion, when a slender, fashionably dressed man, with a very high hat and faultless gloves, passed by them, greeted the princess respectfully, and, with a slight squint, measured Lensky from head to foot. Lensky recognized in him an officer of the guard, Count Konstantin Paulovitch Pachotin, and remembered last winter, during the season in St. Petersburg, he paid court to Natalie. The scrutinizing look of the young man vexed him beyond bounds; everything looked red before him. "Ah! he here?" he asked the young princess with mocking emphasis. "May one congratulate you?"
She frowned and turned away her head. "No!" murmured she. Then raising her wonderful eyes to him again: "So, farewell for two weeks!"