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Dasha, sitting beside her at the work-table helping her with the embroidery, talked for half an hour in her even, monotonous, but rather weak voice. "Darya!" Varvara Petrovna interrupted suddenly, "is there nothing special you want to tell me?" "No, nothing," said Dasha, after a moment's thought, and she glanced at Varvara Petrovna with her light-coloured eyes.
"I see you are dull, poor child," said Auntie Dasha, sinking on her knees by the bedside; she adored Vera. "Tell me the truth, are you bored?" "Dreadfully." "My beauty, my queen, I am your willing slave, I wish you nothing but good and happiness. . . . Tell me, why don't you want to marry Nestchapov? What more do you want, my child?
Stepan Trofimovitch was the first to notice her; he made a rapid movement, turned red, and for some reason proclaimed in a loud voice: "Darya Pavlovna!" so that all eyes turned on the new-comer. "Oh, is this your Darya Pavlovna!" cried Marya Timofyevna. "Well, Shatushka, your sister's not like you. How can my fellow call such a charmer the serf-wench Dasha?"
"It's I." "Ah! Excuse me, I cannot come out to you this minute; I'm giving Dasha her lesson." "Is Ekaterina Pavlovna in the garden?" "No, she went away with my sister this morning to our aunt in the province of Penza. And in the winter they will probably go abroad," she added after a pause. "'God sent . . . the crow . . . a piece . . . of cheese. . . . Have you written it?"
When Auntie Dasha was making jam with a very serious face as though she were performing a religious rite, and her short sleeves displayed her strong, little, despotic hands and arms, and when the servants ran about incessantly, bustling about the jam which they would never taste, there was always a feeling of martyrdom in the air. . . . The garden smelt of hot cherries.
Will you let me pay it out of the fifteen thousand your papa left you?" All day afterwards Auntie Dasha spent in making cherry jam in the garden. Alyona, with her cheeks flushed with the heat, ran to and from the garden to the house and back again to the cellar.
Wasted and fallen away, poor dear, I daresay! I had not the courage to disillusion the sick man; and, indeed, why should he know that his Dasha was now broader than she was long, and that she was living under the protection of some merchants, the brothers Kondatchkov, that she used powder and paint, and was for ever swearing and scolding?
He heard of this and once peeped in on her unawares. Liza, overcome with confusion, flung herself into his arms and shed tears; Stepan Trofimovitch wept too with delight. But Liza soon after went away, and only Dasha was left. When Dasha began to have other teachers, Stepan Trofimovitch gave up his lessons with her, and by degrees left off noticing her. Things went on like this for a long time.
But while I was in the army I got a letter telling me my mother was dead. . . . And now I don't seem to care to go home. It's not my own father, so it's not like my own home." "Then your father is dead?" "I don't know. I am illegitimate." At that moment Auntie Dasha appeared at the window and said: "Il ne faut pas parler aux gens . . . . Go into the kitchen, my good man.
I'm so vile and loathsome, Dasha, that I might really send for you, 'at the latter end, as you say. And in spite of your sanity you'll come. Why will you be your own ruin?" "I know that at the end I shall be the only one left you, and... I'm waiting for that." "And what if I don't send for you after all, but run away from you?" "That can't be. You will send for me."
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