Page:Henryk Sienkiewicz - In Vain.djvu/158

146 As for the countess, it is easy to understand that in her feelings for him there was not and could not be anything which contained hate in it. A somewhat roused vanity might lead rather to love than to hatred. To tell the truth, Countess Lula wished simply that that energetic democrat might in future bend to her aristocratic knees his submissive and enamoured head.

But she had not put the object clearly till she noticed that Yosef was a handsome man. We will state in parenthesis that Countess Leocadia was twenty years old, and that for some time there had been roused in her soul various yearnings and disquiets, of which she could not render account to herself. In the language of poets, that would have been called the echo of a desire "to love and be loved, and perhaps even to die young." But whatever the question was, we may be satisfied by knowing that it furnished Lula with a thread of continual thinking of Yosef, the confidence which she had in him. Her gratitude for protection experienced from day to day increased her sympathy.

It is true that the old countess in her time had told Lula that a well-bred young lady must not love; but Mother Nature whispered