“But,” she said softly, still smoothing out her embroidery, “every man must choose his own career, gentlemen.”
“Lord bless us; what wisdom!” rudely exclaimed the student. “Really, how old are you, Pani?”
“Seventeen,” replied Evelyn, simply,—straightway adding, with an air of mingled triumph and curiosity, “I suppose you thought that I was a great deal older, didn’t you?”
The young men laughed.
“Had I been asked for an opinion concerning your age,” said her neighbor, “I should have been quite at a loss to decide between thirteen and twenty-three. At times you seem a mere child, and the next moment I hear you reasoning with the wisdom of an aged dame.”
“You must treat serious matters seriously, Gavrìlo Petròvitch,” said the young girl in tones of admonition, and once more returned to her work.
For a moment all were still. Evelyn resumed her needle-work with her former deliberation, while the young men looked with curiosity at the miniature form of this wise young person. Although she had grown and developed considerably since the time of her first meeting with Peter, the student’s comments upon her age were quite just. At the first glance this tiny, slender maiden seemed but a girl, although her tranquil, self-possessed movements revealed the dignity of a woman. Her face produced the same impression. That type of face seems peculiar to the Slav women. Handsome, regular features, outlined in calm severity; blue eyes, with a direct and tranquil gaze; pale cheeks, rarely tinged with color,—not however the pallor that is ever ready to flush with the burning flame of passion, but rather akin to the cold purity of the snow. Evelyn’s fair hair, glossy and abundant, showing darker reflections about her marble-like temples, was drawn back and gathered into one massive braid, which seemed to weigh her head back as she walked.
The blind youth, too, had grown taller and more mature. Any one seeing him at that moment, as he sat apart from the group just described, pale, agitated, and handsome, would have been instantly attracted by that peculiar face, upon whose surface every emotion of the soul was so plainly reflected. His black hair waved over a high forehead faintly lined by premature wrinkles; his cheeks alternately flushed and grew pale; the lower lip, slightly drooping at the corners, twitched nervously from time to time, and the large handsome eyes with their unwavering gaze added to this eminently South Russian type of face a somewhat unusual and sombre character.
“So Pani Evelyn supposes,” said the student in a sarcastic tone, after a short pause, “that the matters we have been discussing here are inaccessible to the feminine mind; that her sphere is to be limited by the nursery and the kitchen.”
The young girl replied with her usual seriousness: “No, you are mistaken. I understood all that was said,—therefore it is accessible to a woman’s mind. I spoke only for myself, individually.”