“You don’t recognise me,” he said, taking off his hat, “but I recognise you in spite of its being seven years since I saw you last. You were a child then. I am Lavretsky. Is your mother at home? Can I see her?”

“Mamma will be glad to see you,” replied Lisa; “she had heard of your arrival.”

“Let me see, I think your name is Elisaveta?” said Lavretsky, as he went up the stairs.

“Yes.”

“I remember you very well; you had even then a face one doesn’t forget. I used to bring you sweets in those days.”

Lisa blushed and thought what a queer man. Lavretsky stopped for an instant in the hall. Lisa went into the drawing-room, where Panshin’s voice and laugh could be heard; he had been communicating some gossip of the town to Marya Dmitrievna, and Gedeonovksy, who by this time had come in from the garden, and he was himself laughing aloud at the story he was telling. At the name of Lavretsky, Marya Dmitrievna was all in a flutter. She turned pale and went up to meet him.

“How do you do, how do you do, my dear cousin?” she cried in a plaintive and almost tearful voice, “how glad I am to see you!”

“How are you, cousin?” replied Lavretsky, with a friendly pressure of her out-stretched hand; “how has Providence been treating you?”

“Sit down, sit down, my dear Fedor Ivanitch. Ah, how glad I am! But let me present my daughter Lisa to you.”

“I have already introduced myself to Lisaveta Mihalovna,” interposed Lavretsky.

“Monsier Panshin . . . Sergei Petrovitch Gedeonovsky . . . Please sit down. When I look at you, I can hardly believe my eyes. How are you?”

“As you see, I”m flourishing. And you, too, cousin — no ill-luck to you!— have grown no thinner in eight years.”

“To think how long it is since we met!” observed Marya Dmitrievna dreamily. “Where have you come from now? Where did you leave . . . that is, I meant to say,” she put in hastily, “I meant to say, are you going to be with us for long?”

“I have come now from Berlin,” replied Lavretsky, “and to-morrow I shall go into the country — probably for a long time.”

“You will live at Lavriky, I suppose?”

“No, not at Lavriky; I have a little place twenty miles from here: I am going there.”

“Is that the little estate that came to you from Glafira Petrovna?”

“Yes.”

“Really, Fedor Ivanitch! You have such a magnificent house at Lavriky.”

Lavretsky knitted his brows a little.

“Yes . . . but there’s a small lodge in this little property, and I need nothing more for a time. That place is the most convenient for me now.”

Marya Dmitrievna was again thrown into such a state of agitation that she became quite stiff, and her hands hung lifeless by her sides. Panshin came to her support by entering into conversation with Lavretsky. Marya Dmitrievna regained her composure, she leaned back in her arm-chair and now and then put in a word. But she looked all the while with such sympathy at her guest, sighed so significantly, and shook her head so dejectedly, that the latter at last lost patience and asked her rather sharply if she was unwell.

“Thank God, no,” replied Marya Dmitrievna; “why do you ask?”

“Oh, I fancied you didn’t seem to be quite yourself.”

Marya Dmitrievna assumed a dignified and somewhat offended air. “If that’s how the land lies,” she thought, “it’s absolutely no matter to me; I see, my good fellow, it’s all like water on a duck’s back for you; any other man would have wasted away with grief, but you’ve grown fat on it.” Marya Dmitrievna did not mince matters in her own mind; she expressed herself with more elegance aloud.

Lavretsky certainly did not look like the victim of fate. His rosy-cheeked typical Russian face, with its large white brow, rather thick nose, and wide straight lips seemed breathing with the wild health of the steppes, with vigorous primaeval energy. He was splendidly well-built, and his fair curly hair stood up on his head like a boy’s. It was only in his blue eyes, with their overhanging brows and somewhat fixed look, that one could trace an expression, not exactly of melancholy, nor exactly of weariness, and his voice had almost too measured a cadence.

Panshin meanwhile continued to keep up the conversation. He turned it upon the profits of sugar-boiling, on which he had lately read two French pamphlets, and with modest composure undertook to expound their contents, without mentioning, however, a sin............