JUST before dinner Sipiagin called his wife into the library. He wanted to have a talk with her alone. He seemed worried. He told her that the factory was really in a bad way, that Solomin struck him as a capable man, although a little stiff, and thought it was necessary to continue being aux petits soins with him.

“How I should like to get hold of him!” he repeated once or twice. Sipiagin was very much annoyed at Kollomietzev’s being there. “Devil take the man! He sees nihilists everywhere and is always wanting to suppress them! Let him do it at his own house I He simply can’t hold his tongue!”

Valentina Mihailovna said that she would be delighted to be aux petits soins with the new visitor, but it seemed to her that he had no need of these petits soins and took no notice of them; not rudely in any way, but he was quite indifferent; very remarkable in a man du commun.

“Never mind. . . . Be nice to him just the same!” Sipiagin begged of her.

Valentina Mihailovna promised to do what he wanted and fulfilled her promise conscientiously. She began by having a tete-a-tete with Kollomietzev. What she said to him remains a secret, but he came to the table with the air of a man who had made up his mind to be discreet and submissive at all costs. This “resignation” gave his whole bearing a slight touch of melancholy; and what dignity . . . oh, what dignity there was in every one of his movements! Valentina Mihailovna introduced Solomin to everybody (he looked more attentively at Mariana than at any of the others), and made him sit beside her on her right at table. Kollomietzev sat on her left, and as he unfolded his serviette screwed up his face and smiled, as much as to say, “Well, now let us begin our little comedy!” Sipiagin sat on the opposite side and watched him with some anxiety. By a new arrangement of Madame Sipiagina, Nejdanov was not put next to Mariana as usual, but between Anna Zaharovna and Sipiagin. Mariana found her card (as the dinner was a stately one) on her serviette between Kollomietzev and Kolia. The dinner was excellently served; there was even a “menu”— a painted card lay before each person.

Directly soup was finished, Sipiagin again brought the conversation round to his factory, and from there went on to Russian manufacture in general. Solomin, as usual, replied very briefly. As soon as he began speaking, Mariana fixed her eyes upon him. Kollomietzev, who was sitting beside her, turned to her with various compliments (he had been asked not to start a dispute), but she did not listen to him; and indeed he pronounced all his pleasantries in a half-hearted manner, merely to satisfy his own conscience. He realised that there was something between himself and this young girl that could not be crossed.

As for Nejdanov, something even worse had come to pass between him and the master of the house. For Sipiagin, Nejdanov had become simply a piece of furniture, or an empty space that he quite ignored. These new relations had taken place so quickly and unmistakably that when Nejdanov pronounced a few words in answer to a remark of Anna Zaharovna’s, Sipiagin looked round in amazement, as if wondering where the sound came from.

Sipiagin evidently possessed some of the characteristics for which certain of the great Russian bureaucrats are celebrated for.

After the fish, Valentina Mihailovna, who had been lavishing all her charms on Solomin, said to her husband in English that she noticed their visitor did not drink wine and might perhaps like some beer. Sipiagin called aloud for ale, while Solomin calmly turned towards Valentina Mihailovna, saying, “You may not be aware, madame, that I spent over two years in England and can understand and speak English. I only mentioned it in case you should wish to say anything private before me.” Valentina Mihailovna laughed and assured him that this precaution was altogether unnecessary, since he would hear nothing but good of himself; inwardly she thought Solomin’s action rather strange, but delicate in its own way.

At this point Kollomietzev could no longer contain himself. “And so you’ve been in England,” he began, “and no doubt studied the manners and customs there. Do you think them worth imitating?”

“Some yes, others no.”

“Brief but not clear,” Kollomietzev remarked, trying not to notice the signs Sipiagin was making to him. “You were speaking of the nobility this morning . . . No doubt you’ve had the opportunity of studying the English landed gentry, as they call them there.”

“No, I had no such opportunity. I moved in quite a different sphere. But I formed my own ideas about these gentlemen.”

“Well, do you think that such a landed gentry is impossible among us? Or that we ought not to want it in any case?”

“In the first place, I certainly do think it impossible, and in the second, it’s hardly worthwhile wanting such a thing.”

“But why, my dear sir? “ Kollomietzev asked; the polite tone was intended to soothe Sipiagin, who sat very uneasily on his chair.

“Because in twenty or thirty years your landed gentry won’............