"Yes, a little," the old man muttered. "Have you any message to send him? I will take it to him for you."
"I have nothing to say to him!--I do not know him!" she replies. Her eyes flash angrily, and she holds her head erect.
"H'm I he does not choose to know you," the old man remarks, looking at her still more keenly.
"The unwillingness is mutual. I have not the least desire to know anything of him," she says, with emphasis.
"Ah!--indeed!" he says, with a lowering glance from beneath his shaggy eyebrows. "Shall I tell him so, from you?"
"If you choose!" she replies. Suddenly an idea strikes her; she observes him in her turn more keenly than hitherto, his face, his figure, his hands, tanned and neglected, but slender and shapely, with almond-shaped nails. There is something familiar in his features.
Is he really the brewer Studnecka, the fool? And if no fool, who can it be that ventures thus to address her? Something thrills her entire frame. A portrait recurs to her memory,--a portrait of the elder Leskjewitsch, which, since the family embroilment, has hung in the lumber-room at Zirkow. There is not a doubt that this crazy old creature is her grandfather.
He sees that she has recognized him.
Her bearing has suddenly become haughty and repellent. She adjusts her large straw hat, which has been hanging at the back of her neck.
"Then I am to tell him from you that you do not wish to have anything to do with him?" the old man asks again.