Lisa silently filled the tumblers, which she did not give into the visitors’ hands but put down on the table near them, not having quite recovered from her excitement, and she listened eagerly to the Count’s remarks. His stories, which were not very deep, and the hesitation in his speech gradually calmed her. She did not hear from him the very clever things she had anticipated, nor did she see the elegance in everything she had vaguely expected to find in him. At the third glass of tea, after her bashful eyes had once met his, and he had not looked down but had continued to look at her too quietly and with a slight smile, she even felt rather inimically disposed towards him, and soon found that not only was there nothing particular about him, but that he was in no wise different from other people she had met; that there was no need to be afraid of him though his nails were long and clean, and that there was not even any special beauty in him. Lisa suddenly relinquished her dream, not without some inward pain, and grew calmer; and only the gaze of the silent Cornet, which she felt fixed upon her, disturbed her.

“Perhaps it’s not this one, but that one!” she thought.