Razumov gave a perceptible start),
"yes, that's my origin. A simple provincial family.
"You are a marvel," Peter Ivanovich uttered.
But it was to Razumov that she gave her death's-head smile. Her tone was
quite imperious.
"You must bring the wild young thing here. She is wanted. I reckon upon
your success--mind!"
"She is not a wild young thing," muttered Razumov, in a surly voice.
"Well, then--that's all the same. She may be one of these young
conceited democrats. Do you know what I think? I think she is very much
like you in character. There is a smouldering fire of scorn in you. You
are darkly self-sufficient, but I can see your very soul."
Her shiny eyes had a dry, intense stare, which, missing Razumov, gave
him an absurd notion that she was looking at something which was visible
to her behind him. He cursed himself for an impressionable fool, and
asked with forced calmness--
"What is it you see? Anything resembling me?"
She moved her rigidly set face from left to right, negatively.
"Some sort of phantom in my image?" pursued Razumov slowly. "For, I
suppose, a soul when it is seen is just that. A vain thing. There are
phantoms of the living as well as of the dead."
The tenseness of Madame de S--'s stare had relaxed, and now she looked
at Razumov in a silence that became disconcerting.
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