"Who is dining here?"
"The Ladies Anthropos, Count Bärenburg, Monsieur d'Eblis, Prince Trubetzkoy----"
But Maschenka hears no more. "Bärenburg!" her passionate heart beats loudly. "Moutarde après dîner it may be; but, in any case, Anna seems not to so lowly estimate my insignificant youthfulness as rival, as she acts thus," thinks she to herself. "But we will see, Anna, we will see!" And Maschenka sets her teeth and clenches her tiny fist.
XV.
The next morning she makes a great scene for her aunt and cousin, reproaches them violently and with bitter tears for that she is unlovingly pushed about and repressed, that she plays the rôle of a Cinderella in their house; that she cannot endure living with people who do not love her, etc.
Barbara Alexandrovna bows her head with shame at these reproofs. Anna, on the contrary, opposes the anger of her passionate, excited cousin with icy calm.
"Before all," she begins, "I would beg to remark to you that we are not at all obliged to put up with your rudeness. I do not condescend to answer your ill-bred accusations, for I think without that you will be ashamed of them in a calmer frame of mind. But for the rest, I tell you very plainly, if life with us does not suit you, you can take refuge in a boarding-school."
If Mascha had possessed shrewdness enough to declare herself agreed with the plan of boarding-school, it would have placed the Jeliagins in great embarrassment, on account of the pecuniary aid which they received from Mascha's stay with them. But she did not think of that. A boarding-school is for her something horrible--a prison, where she must give up all possibility of seeing Bärenburg again. And so she submits, shyly, shame-facedly.
When they tell her that, for the third time this week, she is to dine alone, she takes it with such sad, helpless submission that it pains her aunt, and she proposes to ask Nikolai to share her solitary meal; perhaps he may be disengaged.
"Yes, that would be nice," says Mascha. And completely reconciled with her fate, she sends a message to her brother, forms the most delightful plans--then comes her brother's answer.