"But, Boris!" Natalie admonished him. "My poor, unaccountable, dear genius!" She looked at him so roguishly therewith that his anger was scattered to the four winds.
He stretched out both his hands to her across the table; she took them. He bent somewhat forward, wished to draw her hands to his lips, when a light step was heard on the gravel. Natalie blushed, and with a quick, almost frightened movement, drew them away from him. He scowled angrily. Before whom was she embarrassed then?
A young woman in a very elegant negligé costume, profusely trimmed with Valenciennes lace, without hat, and a yellow parasol in her hand, stepped up to the breakfast table. She resembled Natalie, although she was smaller, stouter, and the features of her pretty face were coarser. Lensky recognized in her his wife's sister, Princess Jeliagin, a person whom he detested from the bottom of his heart, even if he had until now only known her slightly, before his marriage with Natalie. Kind friends had told him that she had described his alliance with her sister as une chose absurde. Wife of a rich, quite incompetent diplomat, she had during her ten years' life in foreign countries made all the most absurd aristocratic prejudices her own, and was always addressed as "Princess," although her husband had no title. With all these Western-Europe grimaces she combined something of her Russian, half Asiatic exaggeration, by which she became still more grotesque and tactless. In spite of her boasted exclusiveness she had never quite learned to understand the shades of foreign society, and made frequent mistakes in her choice of acquaintances.
Besides this, with all her weaknesses and affectations, she was good natured to silliness, and hospitable to prodigality.
"So early in the morning, Barbe what a surprise!" Natalie called to her, while she tried not to let it be perceived how inopportune her sister's visit was to her just at that moment. "That is charming, I must introduce my husband to you."
"We know each other already, at least I hope that Boris Nikolaivitch remembers me--once in St. Petersburg, at the Olins. In any case, I am very happy to renew the acquaintance," remarked the Jeliagin, and at once reached him her fat little hand, in a buckskin garden glove. Her voice was guttural and rough, her whole face, as Lensky could now see plainly, was painted.
"How are you, Nikolas?" She turned to little Kolia, while she stroked his head in a friendly manner. "Please greet a person, or have I fallen as deeply in your displeasure as my Anna? I assure you that I cannot help it if she talks foolishly. Only think, Boris Nikolaivitch, he cudgelled my daughter Anna, day before yesterday, because she ventured to assert that a prince was greater than a genius. He answered her that not even an emperor was greater. A genius came next to the dear God, and as she would not agree to that, he struck her, and hard."
The Jeliagin laughed. Lensky also laughed involuntarily, but remarked in a tone of admonition to his son, who had shyly concealed himself behind his mother: "A boy should never strike a girl; that is not proper."
"But why did she say such foolish things?" little Nikolas defended himself, while he wrinkled his small forehead. "I cannot bear that, and then she is larger than I, so much"--he measured the width of his hand above his head.
"She gave him quite a scratch, she was not defenceless," said Barbara Alexandrovna, while she sat down and closed her umbrella. "But to come to something more interesting," she continued; "we have, in spirit, followed you on every step of your American triumphal march, Boris Nikolaivitch; the newspapers gave us the guide thereto. I hope we will now see very much of you. Natascha can tell you how well all artists are received at our house,--and h'm!--and if it is a question of a relation--à propos, could you not come and dine with us this evening? We are quite entre nous, only Lis, Princess Zriny, that eccentric Hungarian, Marinia Löwenskiold, a good friend of yours, you remember her, a few diplomats, etc.; and we are bored as only gens du monde are bored if they have been together under the same roof for ten days. Natalie can tell you how bored we are--merely people from our coterie, who know each other by heart; if you please. And how stupid we are! ha, ha, ha! In desperation we arranged a race in the drawing-room yesterday. Arthur de Blincourt, while jumping a barrier, dislocated a joint, and now lies on a lounge, and lets himself be looked after. But we all long for a new element--on vous attend comme le Messie, Boris Nikolaivitch. You will come, will you not? We dine at eight o'clock."