the window, but Orlando
suddenly reared and started. The rider with perfect self-possession gave
it a cut with the whip across the neck, and keeping a tight grip with
his legs forced it in spite of its opposition, to stand still again at
the window.

"Prenez garde, prenez garde," Marya Dmitrievna kept repeating.

"Lenotchka, pat him," said the young man, "I won't let him be perverse."

The little girl again stretched out her hand and timidly patted the
quivering nostrils of the horse, who kept fidgeting and champing the
bit.

"Bravo!" cried Marya Dmitrievna, "but now get off and come in to us."

The rider adroitly turned his horse, gave him a touch of the spur, and
galloping down the street soon reached the courtyard. A minute later
he ran into the drawing-room by the door from the hall, flourishing his
whip; at the same moment there appeared in the other doorway a tall,
slender dark-haired girl of nineteen, Marya Dmitrievna's eldest
daughter, Lisa.

Chapter IV

The name of the young man whom we have just introduced to the reader
was Vladimir Nikolaitch Panshin. He served in Petersburg on special
commissions in the department of internal affairs. He had come to the
town of O---- to carry out some temporary government commissions,
and was in attendance on the Governor-General Zonnenberg, to whom he
happened to be distantly related. Panshin's father, a retired cavalry
officer and a notorious gambler, was a man with insinuating eyes, a
battered countenance, and a nervous twitch about the mouth. He spent his
whole life hanging about the aristocratic world; frequented the English
clubs of both capitals, and had the reputation of a smart, not very
trustworthy, but jolly good-natured fellow. In spite of his smartness,
he was almost always on the brink of ruin, and the property he left his
son was small and heavily-encumbered. To make up for that, however,
he did exert himself, after his own fashion, over his son's education.
Vladimir Nikolaitch spoke French very well, English well, and German
badly; that is the proper thing; fashionable people would be ashamed
to speak German well; but to utter an occasional--generally a
humorous--phrase in German is quite correct, c'est meme tres chic,
as the Parisians of Petersburg express themselves. By the time he
was fifteen, Vladimir knew how to enter any drawing-room without
embarrassment, how to move about in it gracefully and to leave it at
the appropriate moment. Pansh