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d?"
She leaned on the saddle, seized the abbot's hand and lifted it to her mouth:
"Godfather, could you not send your shpilmen to Krzesnia?"
"What for? They will get drunk in the inn--that's all."
"But they may prevent a quarrel."
The abbot looked into her eyes and then said sharply:
"Let them even kill him."
"Then they must kill me also!" exclaimed Jagienka.
The bitterness which had accumulated in her bosom since that conversation about Danusia with Zbyszko, mingled with grief, now gushed forth in a stream of tears. Seeing this, the abbot encircled her with his arm, almost covering her with his enormous sleeve, and began to talk:
"Do not be afraid, my dear little girl. They may quarrel, but the other boys are noblemen; they will attack him only in a chivalrous manner; they will call him up on the field, and then he can manage for himself, even if he be obliged to fight with both of them at once. As for Jurandowna, about whom you have heard, I will tell you this: there is no wood growing for a bed for the other girl."
"If he prefers the other girl, then I do not care about him," answered Jagienka, through her tears.
"Then why do you, weep?"
"Because I am afraid for him."
"Woman's sense!" said the abbot, laughing.
Then having bent toward Jagienka's ear, he said:
"You must remember, dear girl, that even if he take you, he will be obliged to fight just the same; a nobleman must be a knight." Here he bent still closer and added:
"And he will take you, and before long, as God is in heaven!"
"I do not know about that!" answered Jagienka.
But she began to smile through her tears, and to look at the abbot as if she wished to ask him how he knew it.
Meanwhile, Zbyszko having returned to Krzesnia, went directly to the priest, because he really wished to have a mass read for Macko's health; after having settled about that, he went to the inn, where he expected to find young Wilk of Br