"Lula is only serious. I find thee, Lula, in black colors—art thou in love?"
The countess understood Malinka's idea, but she was not confused.
"Black is the color of mourning; in every case it is my color."
"And beautiful as thy word, cousin," added Pelski.
After tea she seated herself at the piano, and from behind the music-rack could be seen her shapely forehead marked with regular brows. She played a certain melancholy mazurka of Chopin, but trouble and disquiet did not leave her face.
Augustinovich knew music, and from her playing he divined the condition of her mind. Still he thought,—
"She is sad, therefore she plays; but she plays because her cousin is listening."
But on the way home he thought more about Lula and Yosef than one might have expected from his frivolous nature.
"Oh, Satan take it, what will happen, what will happen?" muttered he.
In the midst of these thoughts he entered his lodgings. Yosef was not sleeping yet; he was sitting leaning on his elbows over some book.
