RUDIN
then she would begin to scold her, saying that it was improper for a young girl to be absorbed and to appear absent-minded. But Natalya was not absent-minded; on the contrary, she studied diligently; she read and worked eagerly. Her feelings were strong and deep, but reserved; even as a child she seldom cried, and now she seldom even sighed and only grew slightly pale when anything distressed her. Her mother considered her a sensible, good sort of girl, calling her in a joke ‘mon honnête homme de fille’ but had not a very high opinion of her intellectual abilities. ‘My Natalya happily is cold,’ she used to say, ‘not like me—and it is better so. She will be happy.’ Darya Mihailovna was mistaken. But few mothers understand their daughters.
Natalya loved Darya Mihailovna, but did not fully confide in her.
‘You have nothing to hide from me,’ Darya Mihailovna said to her once, ‘or else you would be very reserved about it; you are rather a close little thing.’
Natalya looked her mother in the face and thought, ‘Why shouldn’t I be reserved?’
84
