The waiter has come and covered a little table and placed upon it tea and cold meat, whereupon he goes. Lensky pours tea. "You will take a cup, Colia? One can always drink tea."
And Nikolai, to whom until then the thought of taking any nourishment to-day had caused a true horror, sets his lips to the cup.
"I hope that you have much to tell me," says Lensky, good-naturedly. "In your letter there was indeed much; I have sufficiently questioned you, have I not? But still not all that I would like to know. Mascha, little rascal, did not write at all. Apropos, what is the matter with the silly girl? I drove to her directly from the station. She is completely changed. I had so looked forward to seeing her. She was fresh and crisp as a moss-rosebud when I left in January, and now she is flabby and yellow as a withered flower left forgotten in a glass. She is no longer even pretty, our little beauty! What is the matter?"
Lensky lays down knife and fork, and looks uneasily, questioningly, at Nikolai. "You wrote me nothing of it," he continues; "and still you must have noticed the change in her."
"What use to write you of it? I consulted a physician; he ordered something for her which had no effect. Her condition is not dangerous, only tediously unpleasant--anæmia in a high degree, nothing else. Why worry you?"
"Anæmia! It is incredible that I should have an anæmic daughter. Poor Mascha!" said Lensky. "Well, I drove to the Avenue Wagram, pleased at the thought of seeing my gay, vivacious darling, like the old child that I am. 'Mademoiselle Lensky at home?' asked I. 'Yes; she is in the garden.' There sits something wrapped in a shawl, shivering and bent over her folded hands; a pale thing, with black circles around her eyes. At first I did not recognize her; then, 'Maschenka,' said I, 'my little dove, my soul!' If you perhaps believe that she rushed in my arms with the little bird-cry which you know--of all the music in the world, that little cry was perhaps the dearest--far from it! She started, quite as if I had frightened her, came very slowly up to me, gave me her cheek. When I wished to inquire the cause of her change, she grew irritable and excited; she was not well, she said; she had a headache--would lie down. But when I prepared to go, she clung to my neck and sobbed, oh! so bitterly. I could not calm her at all. She was alone at home. The Jeliagins were dining out. They must have left her much alone."
He is silent awhile; then, throwing back his head, and in an obstinate tone, as if he wished to cut short some one's argument, he said: "Anæmia! She must have some unhappy love affair. It is too foolish, just like any other girl! And I thought it must need, at least, a Siegfried to unsettle my daughter. Now I have it!" He pushes the hair back from his temples with both hands, and sighs with humorous exaggeration. "Do you know who is in her mind? She certainly did not wish to confess to me."
"I really did not know," stammered Nikolai, uneasily, "if she had an interest--" He suddenly ceases.
"It is evidently one-sided," said Lensky. "But, even then, it needs a cause. Has no one, then, made love to her?"
"I have noticed nothing," says Nikolai, growing more embarrassed. He knows what a burst of rage against aristocrats the mention of the only reason he could give for Mascha's unhappiness would call forth from his father.