Yosef? Is it noble on his part to desert her in this way?"
"Who knows what he intends to do?"
"He ought to know himself," answered Malinka, decidedly, "and he should not conceal his intentions from her."
"He has no time, he is working."
That day, however, Malinka convinced herself that Yosef was not sitting so diligently at home as Augustinovich had represented. While walking with her mother, she met him passing with some young man. He did not notice them. Malinka was almost terrified at his appearance. He seemed to her as pale and crushed as if he had recovered from a grievous illness. "Then he has been sick," thought she, after returning home. Now she understood why Pan Adam would not explain the absence. "Yosef commanded him not to frighten Lula." All at once Yosef rose in Malinka's eyes to the loftiness of an ideal.
Augustinovich came in the evening, as usual. In the drawing-room Pani Visberg and the countess were present.
"Pan Adam," exclaimed Malinka, "I know why Pan Yosef has not been here for so long a time!"
Lula's eyes gleamed, but that moment she
