own in a remote country-house in the steppe,
and wandering day after day from the garden into the fields and
from the fields into the garden to while away the time, and then
sitting at home listening to her grandfather's breathing? But what
could she do? Where could she go? She could find no answer, and as
she was returning home she doubted whether she would be happy here,
and thought that driving from the station was far more interesting
than living here.

Dr. Neshtchapov drove over from the works. He was a doctor, but
three years previously he had taken a share in the works, and had
become one of the partners; and now he no longer looked upon medicine
as his chief vocation, though he still practised. In appearance he
was a pale, dark man in a white waistcoat, with a good figure; but
to guess what there was in his heart and his brain was difficult.
He kissed Auntie Dasha's hand on greeting her, and was continually
leaping up to set a chair or give his seat to some one. He was very
silent and grave all the while, and, when he did speak, it was for
some reason impossible to hear and understand his first sentence,
though he spoke correctly and not in a low voice.

"You play the piano?" he asked Vera, and immediately leapt up, as
she had dropped her handkerchief.

He stayed from midday to midnight without speaking, and Vera found
him very unattractive. She thought that a white waistcoat in the
country was bad form, and his elaborate politeness, his manners,
and his pale, serious face with dark eyebrows, were mawkish; and
it seemed to her that he was perpetually silent, probably because
he was stupid. When he had gone her aunt said enthusiastically:

"Well? Isn't he charming?"

II

Auntie Dasha looked after the estate. Tightly laced, with jingling
bracelets on her wrists, she went into the kitchen, the granary,
the cattle-yard, tripping along with tiny steps, wriggling her
spine; and whenever she talked to the steward or to the peasants,
she used, for some reason, to put on a pince-nez. Vera's grandfather
always sat in the same place, playing patience or dozing. He ate a
very great deal at dinner and supper; they gave him the dinner
cooked to-day and what was left from yesterday, and cold pie left
from Sunday, and salt meat from the servants' dinner, and he ate
it all greedily. And every dinner left on Vera such an impression,
that when she saw afterwards a flock of sheep driven by, or flour
being brought from the