“Why, do you imagine,” said the old prince wrathfully, “that I keep her, that I can’t part with her？ What an idea！” he protested angrily. “I am ready for it to-morrow！ Only, I tell you, I want to know my future son-in-law better. You know my principles： everything open！ To-morrow I will ask her in your presence; if she wishes it, let him stay on. Let him stay on, and I’ll see.” The prince snorted. “Let her marry, it’s nothing to me,” he screamed in the piercing voice in which he had screamed at saying good-bye to his son.
“I will be frank with you,” said Prince Vassily in the tone of a crafty man, who is convinced of the uselessness of being crafty with so penetrating a companion. “You see right through people, I know. Anatole is not a genius, but a straightforward, good-hearted lad, good as a son or a kinsman.”
“Well, well, very good, we shall see.”
As is always the case with women who have for a long while been living a secluded life apart from masculine society, on the appearance of Anatole on the scene, all the three women in Prince Nikolay Andreivitch’s house felt alike that their life had not been real life till then. Their powers of thought, of feeling, of observation, were instantly redoubled. It seemed as though their life had till then been passed in darkness, and was all at once lighted up by a new brightness that was full of significance.
Princess Marya did not remember her face and her coiffure. The handsome, open face of the man who might, perhaps, become her husband, absorbed her whole attention. She thought him kind, brave, resolute, manly, and magnanimous. She was convinced of all that. Thousands of dreams of her future married life were continually floating into her imagination. She drove them away and tried to disguise them.
“But am I not too cold with him？” thought Princess Marya. “I try to check myself, because at the bottom of my heart I feel myself too close to him. But of course he doesn’t know all I think of him, and may imagine I don’t like him.”
And she tried and knew not how to be cordial to him.
“The poor girl is devilish ugly,” Anatole was thinking about her.
