LITMIR.BIZ

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I shed light liberally enough to illuminate your intelligence?"

      "She is Vera Demidof, you mean; I did not know she had returned. Well, she has come too soon, she is a child, I will say neither yes nor no to her until I can judge of her when full grown." Sasha flushed and looked aggrieved. His companion laughed.

      "You are not a very ardent fiancé," she said. "Remember, it is your duty to love her; she will expect to be greeted radiantly, to hear words of endearment, delight at her unexpected return, and so forth; compose your features, my friend, you are frowning; look pleased, ardent, full of affection, and so go and do your duty."

      "You speak foolishly; it is not for you to bid me perform this foolery, you who know that my heart contains but one image. You must be aware that my betrothal is a mere farce, a thing to be shaken off as easily as assumed. I shall speak to the girl—courtesy demands it, but I shall pretend no affection."

      "Poor child, she will be heart-broken; see how lovingly she gazes at you even now!"

      Sasha looked, but Vera's gaze did not strike him as being aptly described by the word "loving"; on the contrary, though she turned her head when she observed that she was watched, he was in time to surprise what appeared to him to be an indignant rather than a languishing expression.

      As a matter of fact Vera was very angry indeed. Constantine had returned to her shy and shamefaced.

      "Well—is he coming? What did he say?" she had asked.

      "His vanity is terrible," said Constantine, "and his manners are even worse."

      "How—what do you mean—does he recognise me and refuse to renew our acquaintance?"

      "Oh no, he did not suspect who you were. He said you were a mere child and hinted that he had no time to waste upon children."

      "Children!" repeated Vera indignantly; "and I in my seventeenth year! Bah—he has, as you say, no manners. So he has refused to be presented."

      "Not quite that! 'I will come, if I can, later,' he said; I think he is much absorbed, at present, by the lady at his side; it is a different one, with him, every month."

      "I will wait for half an hour, and then, if he comes not, you shall take me away, Constantine," said Vera; and though the lad at her side protested against her doing Maximof so much honour, she insisted upon staying.

      Presently, however, seeing that Sasha showed signs of crossing the room in order to approach her, she said quickly:—

      "See, Constantine, now he comes; when it is quite clear that his intention is to speak to me, I will rise and you shall give me your hand to escort me away!"

      "Good," exclaimed her cousin delightedly. "Yes, that's the way he should be treated—see, he is approaching—come!"

      The two young cousins rose and passed down the room, almost meeting Sasha Maximof, who stopped, obviously expecting them to do the same. "Demidof," he said, "be so kind as to present me to your friend."

      Vera passed on, taking no notice whatever. Constantine looked round, over his shoulder.

      "You will have to wait now, my friend, until she is a little older," he said, and Vera pinched his arm with delight.

      "Bravo, cousin," she said, "that was splendid."

      "It was rather daring," said Constantine, somewhat ruefully, "to a senior cadet; I don't know what will happen to me."

      Sasha returned to his charmer, who, unfortunately, had witnessed his discomfiture.

      "You've met your match, my friend!" she laughed; "she's decidedly pretty, too, when one sees her closely."

      "She's an impudent little minx at any rate," said Sasha, laughing also, though somewhat artificially, and at the same time flushing hotly; he was not used to rebuffs from the fair sex. "By such conduct—revealing a tendency to bad manners—she commits felo de se as regards—well—a certain object she has in view."

      On the way home Vera, following up some train of thought, remarked to her cousin that it was a pity Sasha Maximof was so good-looking; to which Constantine replied that he did not see much to admire in the fellow.

      CHAPTER VI

      The Boyar Demidof, though not by profession a diplomat, had procured for himself an appointment as Attaché to the Embassy in Paris, in order to be near his daughter as well as his married sister. Vera's presence in St. Petersburg was in the nature of a flying visit. She would return with her mother to Paris in a month or two.

      During that period she saw little of Sasha Maximof. He called upon the Demidofs once or twice, but was obviously but little attracted by Vera, whom he treated as a child, and from whom he did not attempt to conceal the fact that he had on hand more than one affaire de cœur and that he thought but little, if anything, of the contract entered into by their respective fathers when both of the principal parties were too young to understand the nature of the proceedings.

      Vera began by treating Sasha with much hauteur, desiring to punish him for his indifference; but when it became clear to her that he cared nothing whether she bore herself haughtily or kindly, and was, indeed, very little interested in her, she began, with the inconsistency of human nature, to realise that whether she would have it so or no her interest in him grew, and with it the recognition that the young man was undoubtedly very good-looking and had a certain attractiveness about him. Before Vera returned to Paris Sasha Maximof had quite made up his mind that he was far too good to waste himself upon the commonplace little person his father had seen fit, without consulting his wishes, to select for his partner in life. He intended to do much better. The Countess, his mother, was inclined to agree with him. He consulted her upon the question as to whether a contract of marriage so made was binding or not.

      "If both parties desire to annul it," the Countess thought, "surely no one would compel them to hold to it."

      "The question is," said Sasha, "will the girl agree to annul it? The match is a good one, from her point of view; I don't suppose there's much harm done yet, in a personal way, I mean, for we have scarcely met and I certainly have not gone out of my way to be in any way attractive to her."

      "Go and see the girl and talk it over with her," suggested the Countess, and this advice Sasha presently followed.

      He called upon Vera and plunged quickly into the business on hand, though he began somewhat diffidently, for, though in speaking with his mother he had taken for granted that the girl could scarcely have fallen in love with him yet, Sasha, in the secret realms of his inner consciousness, was by no means so assured of the matter; indeed, he was strongly of opinion that no girl could see him and pass entirely unscathed through the ordeal.

      Somewhat to his disgust he could detect no sign of regret or disappointment in Vera's attitude; on the contrary, he was not at all sure that she was not as anxious as himself to be relieved from the foolish obligation imposed upon both of them as children.

      "I never could understand what was the object of our honoured fathers in making so foolish an arrangement," said Sasha; "my idea is that living down in the wilds as they did, they were so put to it for amusement that they invented this as a pastime; it would be interesting, they thought, to watch our affection bud and blossom and so on; but of course, as you know, my father died and neither my mother nor I ever lived in the country again, while you went to Paris. Of course if we had met constantly, living close to one another, and never seeing any one else, it might have been different."

      Vera suddenly burst out laughing at this point.

      "You mean that if neither of us had ever met any other young people besides our two selves we might one day have come to like one another? Believe me, Alexander Petrovitch, I am far from being so conceited as to suppose you could ever have learned to admire me. Is this, then, your theory: that if, for instance, a man and a woman were thrown together upon a desert island, they would be bound eventually to fall in love with one another? On the contrary, I should think they would soon be wearied to death by one another's society."

      "I did not mean that at all," said Sasha, flushing rather angrily, for it occurred to him that his amour propre was in some way being attacked. "I meant

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