Page:Henryk Sienkiewicz - Potop - The Deluge (1898 translation by Jeremiah Curtin) - Vol 1.djvu/336

306 vanished on a sudden, as if frightened by the sight of the approaching guest.

"Bad!" thought Pan Andrei; "she hides from me."

He was pained, and his pain was all the greater since just before the mild sunset, the view of that house, and the calm so spread around it tilled his heart with hope, though perhaps Fan Andrei did not note that.

He cherished as it were an illusion that he was going to his betrothed, who would receive him with eyes gleaming from joy and a blush on her cheeks.

And the illusion was broken. Scarcely had she seen him when she rushed away, as if from an evil spirit; and straightway Pan Tomash came out to meet him with a face at once unquiet and cloudy.

Kmita bowed and said, "I have long wished to express duly my devotion to you, my benefactor; but I was unable to do so sooner in these times of disturbance, though surely there was no lack in me of desire."

"I am very grateful, and I beg you to enter," answered the sword-bearer, smoothing the forelock on his head, — an act usual with him when confused or uncertain of himself. And he stepped aside from the door to let the guest pass.

Kmita for a while did not wish to enter first, and they bowed to each other on the threshold ; at last Pan Andrei took the step before the sword-bearer, and in a moment they were in the room.

They found there two nobles, — one, a man in the bloom of life. Pan Dovgird of Plemborg, a near neighbor of the Billeviches; the other. Pan Hudzynski, a tenant in Eyragoly. Kmita noticed that they had barely heard his name when their faces changed and they seemed to act like dogs at sight of a wolf; he looked at them first defiantly, and then feigned not to see them.

A disagreeable silence succeeded.

Pan Andrei grew impatient and gnawed his mustaches; the guests looked at him with a fixed frown, and the sword- bearer stroked his forelock.

"Will you drink a glass of poor nobles' mead with us?" asked he at last, pointing to a decanter and a glass. I request you — "

"I will drink with a gentleman!" said Kmita, rather abruptly.

Dovgird and Hudzynski began to puff, taking the answer