For one instant she hesitated, then the wish to distinguish herself before Bärenburg, to please her father, comes to her. She plays, and how beautifully she plays!
As if electrified, Bärenburg rises and goes up to the piano. He has a great love for good music. The A minor rondo is his express favorite. In this composition of universal sadness, in which the purest artist soul which ever came down to us from heaven weeps over the frivolity of an entire century, Mascha's still immature but always tender and delicately shaded mastery is especially noticeable.
"That was entrancing," calls out Bärenburg, with true enthusiasm. "You are a God-gifted artist!"
"That is she; I heard her without," suddenly a deep, old woman's voice joins energetically in his praise.
The first of the ladies invited for the evening has appeared.
She is a very handsome old lady, an old lady with gay, mocking, and still good-natured, sparkling blue eyes which betray her Irish origin--a woman whom calumny has never ventured to touch, although she has for thirty years been one of the "influentials" of Europe, one of the two or three women for whom Lensky feels respect, Lady Banbury.
"I congratulate you on your daughter, Lensky," says she, greeting the artist cordially. "So this is the fat little baby whom I used to carry about in St. Petersburg. I am very glad to see you again, my child." And Lady Banbury gives her hand to Mascha. But when Mascha, with a shy courtesy, wishes to draw it to her lips, the old lady says: "I grudge the leather your fresh lips; let me embrace you, that is, if it is not unpleasant for you to kiss an old woman who loved your mother very dearly. Ah! good evening, Nickolai. You here also, Charley?" to Bärenburg. Then, at length, remembering the circumstance that she is really not Lensky's but his sister-in-law's guest, she turns to the latter.
Strange, all the truly distinguished ladies who are present this evening commit the same, perhaps somewhat voluntary, error--they have all come on Lensky's account merely; they come early, in simple toilets. All have a pleasant word for Mascha, tease Lensky with some ancient reminiscence, and Mascha is pleased with their charm, with the gay mood which they have brought with them, with the great respect which they show her father. Sonia comes, but not Nita. It is a great disappointment for Nikolai. He has not yet ceased to inquire of Sophie for her friend's health, when a large, stout, handsome, painted blonde enters, a woman with too bare shoulders and too long train, a woman the sight of whom has the effect of the Medusa's head upon all the other women.
"How does she come here?" ask the other ladies. "How does she come here?" they ask each other oftener and oftener, as, one after the other, a procession of brilliant social ambiguities file in--a cosmopolitan battalion of Lensky enthusiasts, recruited from the highest circles.
Men appear sparsely. They form scarcely a third part of the numerous guests.