Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 26, 2025
Happy, gay, smiling and frank, she fluttered into the room, looked hesitatingly, first at Raisky, then at her aunt, who was nearly beside herself. "Your cousin, Marfinka, is pleased to present you with a house, silver, and lace. You are, he thinks, a beggared, dowerless girl. Make a curtsey, thank your benefactor, kiss his hand Well?"
"You would only disturb me." "Then we shall send everything over. Ah, Veroshka, people have sent me so many presents, and flowers and bonbons. I must show them to you," and she ran over a list of them. "Yes, show me everything; perhaps I will come later," said Vera absently. "Another bouquet?" asked Marfinka, pointing to the one that lay on the floor. "For whom? How lovely!"
She could not keep out of her head anxiety as to what change had come over Vera since yesterday evening. She had had a little quarrel with Tiet Nikonich, and had scolded him for having brought Marfinka the Sevres mirror. Afterwards she was closeted with him for a quarter of an hour in her sitting-room, and he emerged from the interview looking serious.
Marfinka drew closer to Raisky, and looked down indifferently on the familiar picture. "Come down!" he said suddenly, and seized her hand. "No, I am afraid," she answered trembling, and drew back. "I won't let you fall. Do you think I can't take care of you?" "Not at all, but I am afraid. Veroshka has no fear, but goes down alone, even in the dusk.
If I thought at all I thought of these rooms in which lives the only woman who loves me and is loved by me, you alone in the whole world. And now," he said, turning to Marfinka, "I want to win my sisters too." His aunt took off her spectacles and gazed at him. "In all my days I have never seen anything like it," she said. "Here the only person with no roots like that is Markushka."
Don't frighten her. Leave me now, for I must rest." At last Marfinka went. Vera shut the door after her, and lay down on the divan. When Raisky returned to his room at daybreak and looked in the mirror, he hardly recognised himself. He felt chilly, and sent Marina for a glass of wine which he drank before he threw himself on his bed.
Marfinka, a rosy little girl of four, was often self-willed, and often cried, but before the tears were dry she was laughing and shouting again. Veroshka rarely wept, and then quietly. She soon recovered, but she did not like to be told to beg pardon. Boris's aunt wondered, as she saw him gay and serious by turns, what occupied his mind; she wondered what he did all day long.
She had lost all interest in the book, was herself sickened by its pious tone, and was really ashamed of having had recourse to so gross a method. Marina, Yakob and Vassilissa came one after another to say that supper was ready, but Tatiana Markovna wanted none, Vera declined, and to Marina's astonishment even Marfinka, who never went supperless to bed, was not hungry.
"Well, Granny, I leave Marfinka to you, but do not attempt to do anything with Vera. You must not restrain her in any way, must leave her her freedom. One bird is born for the cage, another for freedom. Vera will be able to direct her own life." "Do I restrain or repress her?
Once or twice she had looked at him in a kind, almost affectionate way, but his wild glance betrayed to her the agitation, of which she deemed herself to be the cause, and to avoid meeting his eyes she bent her head over her empty plate. "After dinner, I shall drive with Marfinka to the hay harvest," said Tatiana Markovna to Raisky.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking