'Marianna? Eh?' (The second 'eh?' was decidedly more nasal than the first.)
'Open your eyes, I tell you!'
Sipyagin frowned.
'Well, we will go into all that later on. Just now I only wanted to say one thing.. . . This fellow will probably be rather uncomfortable . . . of course, that's natural enough, he's not used to society. So we shall have to be rather friendly with him . . . so as not to alarm him. I don't mean that for you; you're a perfect treasure, and you can captivate any one in no time, if you choose to. J'en sais quelque chose, Madame! I mention it in regard to other people; for instance, our friend there.'
He pointed to a fashionable grey hat lying on a whatnot; the hat belonged to Mr. Kallomyetsev, who happened to be at Arzhano early that morning.
'Il est très cassant, you know; he has such an intense contempt for the people, a thing of which I deeply disapprove! I've noticed in him, too, for some time past, a certain irritability and quarrelsomeness. . . . Is his little affair in that quarter' (Sipyagin nodded his head in some undefined direction, but his wife understood him) 'not getting on well? Eh?'
'Open your eyes! I tell you again.'
Sipyagin got up.
39
