"I cannot let you go away angry," said she. p. 23.
"I cannot let you go away angry," said she. "Come to-morrow to lunch. We never receive in the morning, but you will be welcome."
This time he took her hand in his, and looked in her eyes with a peculiar mixture of anger and tenderness.
"You know I do everything that you wish," murmured he; "but----"
"Well?" She smiled pleasantly and encouragingly. He turned away his head and went.
"Perhaps in reality she is only like the others, but still she is bewitching!" he murmured, as he stumbled down the old marble steps of the palace in the darkness.
* * * * * *
Yes, she was bewitching. Many still remember how charming she was at that time. She was from Moscow, and a true Moscow woman; that is to say, deeper, more polished, more intellectual, than the average St. Petersburg woman, whom a pert Frenchman has described as "Parisiennes à la sauce tartare." Lensky had met her the former year at her relatives' in Petersburg, where they had sent her for the ball season, perhaps with the idea that she would make a good match.
Her domestic circumstances were quite disturbed. Her mother, a former beauty, and who in her youth had been much admired at the court of Alexander I., could not adapt herself to her poverty--that is to say, she absolutely could not exist on the very moderate remains of a splendid property which her husband had squandered. She never complained; she only never kept within her means. She was always planning new reforms, but her most saving plans always proved costly when carried out.
When she summoned Natalie home from St. Petersburg the former May she had just formed a quite special resolution: she would travel to a foreign country, in order, as she expressed it, to be unconstrainedly shabby and economical. Her unconstrained shabbiness in Rome consisted in living in a very picturesque palazzo with two maids brought with her from Russia, a male factotum, and a number of Italian assistants; by day, clad in a faded sky-blue peignoir, stretched on a lounge, alternately reading French novels and playing patience; in the evening, receiving an amusing assembly of gens du monde and celebrities, among whom the already mentioned magnetizer enjoyed her especial sympathy, at dinner or tea. Her economy culminated in locking up the most trifling articles with great punctiliousness and never being able to find the keys; for which reason the locksmith must be frequently summoned.