Liza, red in the face and with downcast eyes, was ostensibly occupied with
filling up the teapot, and did not dare to look at the officers as they
entered the room.
Anna Fedorovna, on the contrary, briskly jumped up and bowed, and without
taking her eyes from the count's face began to talk to him, now finding an
extraordinary resemblance to his father, now presenting her daughter, now
offering him tea, meats, or jelly-cakes.
No one paid any attention to the cornet, thanks to his modest behavior; and
he was very glad of it, because it gave him a chance, within the limits of
propriety, to observe and study the details of Liza's beauty, which had
evidently come over him with the force of a surprise.
The uncle listening to his sister's conversation had a speech ready on his
lips, and was waiting for a chance to relate his cavalry experiences.
The count smoked his cigar over his tea, so that Liza had great difficulty
in refraining from coughing, but he was very talkative and amiable; at
first, in the infrequent pauses of Anna Fedorovna's conversation, he
introduced his own stories, and finally he took the conversation into his
own hands.
One thing struck his listeners as rather strange: in his talk he often used
words, which, though not considered reprehensible in his own set, were
here rather audacious, so that Anna Fedorovna was a little abashed, and
Liza blushed to the roots of her hair. But this the count did not notice,
and continued to be just as natural and amiable as ever.
Liza filled the glasses in silence, not putting them into the hands of the
guests, but pushing them toward them; she had not entirely recovered from
her agitation, but listened eagerly to the count's anecdotes.
The count's pointless tales, and the pauses in the conversation, gradually
re-assured her. The bright things that she had expected from him were not
forthcoming, nor did she find in him that surpassing elegance for which she
had confusedly hoped. Even as soon as the third glass of tea, when her
timid eyes once encountered his, and he did not avoid them, but continued
almost too boldly to stare at her, with a lurking smile, she became
conscious of a certain feeling of hostility against him; and she soon
discovered that there was not only nothing out of the ordinary in him, but
that he was very little different from those whom she had already seen; in
fact, that there was no reason to be afraid of him. She noticed that he had
long and neat finger-nails, but otherwise there was no mark of special
beauty about him.
Liza suddenly, not without some inward sorrow, renouncing her dream,
regained her self-possession; and only the undemonstrative cornet's glance,
which she felt fixed upon her, disquieted her.
"Perhaps it is not the count, but the other," she said to herself.