'No... I don't care for it,' she responded, as though catching my secret
hint.

'Oho!' thought I, and felt, as it were, delighted at something.

'Susanna Ivanovna,' Eleonora Karpovna announced suddenly in her German
Russian, 'music greatly loves, and herself very beautifully plays the
piano, only she likes not to play the piano when she is greatly pressed
to play.'

Susanna made Eleonora Karpovna no reply--she did not even look at
her--only there was a faint movement of her eyes, under their dropped
lids, in her direction. From this movement alone--this movement of her
pupils--I could perceive what was the nature of the feeling Susanna
cherished for the second wife of her stepfather.... And again I was
delighted at something.

Meanwhile the duet was over. Fustov got up and with hesitating footsteps
approached the window, near which Susanna and I were sitting, and asked
her if she had received from Lengold's the music that he had promised to
order her from Petersburg.

'Selections from _Robert le Diable,_' he added, turning to me,
'from that new opera that every one's making such a fuss about.'

'No, I haven't got it yet,' answered Susanna, and turning round with her
face to the window she whispered hurriedly. 'Please, Alexander
Daviditch, I entreat you, don't make me play to-day. I don't feel in the
mood a bit.'