Page:The Novels of Ivan Turgenev (volume V).djvu/156

'I am in perfect health, I 'm thankful to say,' answered Litvinov.

'That 's the greatest of blessings,' pursued the general, with an affable grimace; 'and indeed one doesn't, as a rule, come to Baden for the waters; but the waters here are very effectual, je veux dire, efficaces; and any one who suffers, as I do for instance, from a nervous cough——'

Irina rose quickly. 'We will see each other again, Grigory Mihalitch, and I hope soon,' she said in French, contemptuously cutting short her husband's speech, 'but now I must go and dress. That old princess is insufferable with her everlasting parties de plaisir, of which nothing comes but boredom.'

'You 're hard on every one to-day,' muttered her husband, and he slipped away into the next room.

Litvinov was turning towards the door. . . . Irina stopped him.

'You have told me everything,' she said, 'but the chief thing you concealed.'

'What's that?'

'You are going to be married, I 'm told?'

Litvinov blushed up to his ears. ... As a fact, he had intentionally not referred to Tanya; but he felt horribly vexed, first, that Irina knew about his marriage, and, secondly, that she had, as it were, convicted him of a desire to