e
scene she had prepared. Very little sentimentality had come of it;
Varvara Pavlovna, in her opinion, ought to have flung herself at her
husband's feet.

"How was it you didn't understand me?" she commented: "I kept saying
'down.'"

"It is better as it was, dear auntie; do not be uneasy--it was all for
the best," Varvara Pavlovna assured her.

"Well, any way, he's as cold as ice," observed Marya Dmitrievna. "You
didn't weep, it is true, but I was in floods of tears before his eyes.
He wants to shut you up at Lavriky. Why, won't you even be able to come
and see me? All men are unfeeling," she concluded, with a significant
shake of the head.

"But then women can appreciate goodness and noble-heartedness,"
said Varvara Pavlovna, and gently dropping on her knees before Marya
Dmitrievna, she flung her arms about her round person, and pressed her
face against it. That face wore a sly smile, but Marya Dmitrievna's
tears began to flow again.

When Lavretsky returned home, he locked himself in his valet's room, and
flung himself on a sofa; he lay like that till morning.

Chapter XLIV

The following day was Sunday. The sound of bells ringing for early mass
did not wake Lavretsky--he had not closed his eyes all night--but it
reminded him of another Sunday, when at Lisa's desire he had gone to
church. He got up hastily; some secret voice told him that he would
see her there to-day. He went noiselessly out of the house, leaving a
message for Varvara Pavlovna that he would be back to dinner, and with
long strides he made his way in the direction in which the monotonously
mournful bells were calling him. He arrived early; there was scarcely
any one in the church; a deacon was reading the service in the chair;
the measured drone of his voice--sometimes broken by a cough--fell
and rose at even intervals. Lavretsky placed himself not far from the
entrance. Worshippers came in one by one, stopped, crossed themselves,
and bowed in all directions; their steps rang out in the empty, silent
church, echoing back distinctly under the arched roof. An infirm poor
little old woman in a worn-out cloak with a hood was on her knees near
Lavretsky, praying assiduously; her toothless, yellow, wrinkled face
expressed intense emotion; her red eyes were gazing fixedly upwards at
the holy figures on the iconostasis; her bony hand was constantly coming
out from under her cloak, and slowly and earnestly making a great sign
of the cross. A pe