The two ladies took their tea at a little table in the cool boudoir, and had indeed a cozy chat as the princess had promised, until the arrival of her guests. They expressed their judgments on them, beginning with Liza Merkalof.
"She is very charming, and she has always been congenial to me," said Anna.
"You ought to like her. She adores you. Yesterday evening, after the races, she came to see me, and was in despair not to find you. She says that you are a genuine heroine of a romance, and that if she were a man, she would commit a thousand follies for your sake. Stremof told her she did that, even as she was."
"But please tell me one thing I never could understand," said Anna, after a moment of silence, and in a tone which clearly showed that she did not ask an idle question but that what she wanted explained was more important to her than would appear. "Please tell me, what are the relations between her and Prince Kaluzhsky, the man they call Mishka? I have rarely seen them together. What are their relations?"
A smile came into Betsy's eyes, and she looked keenly at Anna.
"It's a new kind," she replied. "All these ladies have adopted it. They've thrown their caps behind the mill. But there are ways and ways of throwing them."
"Yes, but what are her relations with Kaluzhsky?"
Betsy, to Anna's surprise, broke into a gale of irresistible laughter, which was an unusual thing with her.
"But you are trespassing on the Princess Miagkaya's province; it is the question of an enfant terrible," said Betsy, trying in vain to restrain her gayety, but again breaking out into that contagious laughter which is the peculiarity of people who rarely laugh. "But you must ask them," she at length managed to say, with the tears running down her cheeks.
"Well! you laugh," said Anna, in spite of herself joining in her friend's amusement; "but I never could understand it at all, and I don't understand what part the husband plays."
