make you some coffee, so go and wash and get ready,” said the baroness, sitting down again, and anxiously turning the screw in the new coffee pot. “Pierre, give me the coffee,” she said, addressing Petritsky, whom she called Pierre as a contraction of his surname, making no secret of her relations with him. “I’ll put it in.”

“You’ll spoil it!”

“No, I won’t spoil it! Well, and your wife?” said the baroness suddenly, interrupting Vronsky’s conversation with his comrade. “We’ve been marrying you here. Have you brought your wife?”

“No, baroness. I was born a Bohemian, and a Bohemian I shall die.”

“So much the better, so much the better. Shake hands on it.”