"But I thought Pan Yatsek--" said Anulka through her set teeth.
"Thou knowest that Yatsek has not seen Pan Gideon."
Then Anulka began to repeat feverishly,--
"Yes, I know! He had something else in his head! Let that go! I do not want to know anything. I do not, I do not! It is all finished, and finished forever."
A dry, nervous weeping shook her bosom. After a moment she repeated again,--
"It is finished beyond recall!" Then they knelt down to an "Our Father," which they repeated each evening in company.
Next day Anulka appeared with a calm face, but something had changed in her, something remained unexpressed, something had shut itself up in her. She was not sad, but all at once, she had grown, as it were, some years older, and she had in her now a certain calm dignity, so that Pan Gideon, who hitherto had taken into account himself only, began without noting it, to consider her also. In general he was unable to command himself, and it seemed to him specially strange that he felt in some sense his dependence on Anulka. He began to fear those thoughts which she did not express, but which she might conceal in her spirit. He tried to forestall such, and put in place of them others, of the kind which he wanted. Even the silence of Pani Vinnitski was oppressive and seemed to him suspicious; so he worked out fantastic pictures, talked, joked, but there flashed up in his steel eyes at times certain gleams of impatience.
Meanwhile news of his engagement had gone through the neighborhood. Of this engagement he now made no secret; on the contrary, he sent letters announcing it to Pan Serafin, and to his nearest neighbors; he wrote letters to the Kohanovskis, to the Podlodovskis, to the Sulgostovskis, to Pan Grothus, to the Krepetskis, and even to distant relatives of his late wife, with invitations to the betrothal, after which the marriage would be celebrated immediately.
Pan Gideon would have preferred to get a dispensation from the banns even, but unfortunately it was the Lenten season, and he had to wait till after Easter. He took both women, therefore, to Radom where the young lady was to find her wedding outfit, and he to buy horses more showy than those which he had at that time in his stables.