Meanwhile the days glided by as usual, those days of tedious preparation for the harvest. And she was bustling about and working hard, but as full of song as any lark; unweariedly joyful, blossoming all over with gladness, like a rose-bush or an exuberant hollyhock; or rather like some flower from the garden of Paradise—so winsome to see, so radiantly alluring with those wonderful eyes of hers, so perpetually wreathed with beaming smiles! Even the glances of aged men followed her with delight, and young swains again came flocking about her cabin, sighing with love. But she rejected every one of them. “Take root here, if you will; you’ll profit nothing,” she said mockingly to each. “We are all scorned by her! She is as haughty as any Manor lady,” they complained to Matthew. And he only sighed bitterly: he himself, had he any greater privilege than to talk at dusk with her mother, and eye Yagna as she hurried about the cabin, and listen to the songs she sang? He looked and listened, and each time went home in a surlier mood, now more and more often repairing to the tavern, and on his return thence discharging his bitterness on everyone around him. Especially on Teresa, whom he pained so much that life was a burden to her; so much that, meeting Yagna one day, she could not forbear from a manifestation of spite—turning her back on her and spitting! But Yagna, walking by with far-away looks, passed on without even seeing her. Teresa, in a fury, said to the girls that were by, washing at the mill-pond: “See ye how she stalks past—never looking at anyone, either by day or by night?” “And,” cried another, “arrayed as if it were the local feast to-day!” “Daily she sits combing her hair till noon!” “She’s always buying ribbons and headgear!” they chimed in, full of hate. Since some time, whenever she appeared in the village, she was followed everywhere by the women’s piercing looks—sharp as cats’ claws, stinging as a viper’s fangs. And on every occasion they would find something to say against her. The goodwives whispered in Ploshka’s enclosure, as she passed: “It is unbearable, the way she sets herself above us all.” “And dresses like a Manor Lady: whence can the money come?” “Has she not great favour with the Voyt?” “Antek also, they say, is very open-handed with her.” But here Yagustynka interfered. “Oh, no, Antek cares no more for her than a dog for a fifth leg! ’Tis someone else she has taken up with now!” And she smiled with such a knowing air that they all pestered her to know who this was. She would not, and told them: “I am no scandalmonger! Ye have eyes: find out for yourselves!” And from that time, a hundred pair of eyes spied all Yagna’s doings still more closely than ever. So many hounds in pursuit of one hare! Yagna, thus constantly watched by prying eyes, went her way quite unconscious; nor would she have cared in any case, having the bliss of seeing her Yanek daily, and losing her whole being in his eyes.