'Yes, I intend to.'
'Well . . . and if I forbid you to?'
'I sha'n't listen to you.'
Valentina Mihalovna bounded up in her chair.
'Oh, you won't listen to me! Oh, indeed! And that's said to me by the girl I have loaded with benefits, whom I have cared for in my own house—that is what's said to me . . . is said to me . . .'
'By the daughter of a disgraced father,' Marianna put in gloomily. 'Go on; don't mince matters.'
'Ce n'est pas moi qui vous le fais dire, mademoiselle; but, any way, there's nothing to be proud of in that. A girl who lives at my expense'
'Don't taunt me with that, Valentina Mihalovna! It would cost you more to keep a French governess for Kolya. . . . You know I give him French lessons.'
Valentina Mihalovna raised a hand holding a cambric handkerchief scented with ylang-ylang and embroidered with a huge white monogram in one corner, and tried to make some retort, but Marianna went on vehemently:
'You would have every right a thousand times over, every right to speak if, instead of all you have just been reckoning up, instead of all these
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