f it. Happiness was not for me; even when I
had hopes of happiness, my heart was always heavy. I knew all my own
sins and those of others, and how papa made our fortune; I know it all.
For all that there must be expiation. I am sorry for you, sorry for
mamma, for Lenotchka; but there is no help; I feel that there is no
living here for me; I have taken leave of all, I have greeted everything
in the house for the last time; something calls to me; I am sick at
heart, I want to hide myself away for ever. Do not hinder me, do not
dissuade me, help me, or else I must go away alone."

Marfa Timofyevna listened to her niece with horror.

"She is ill, she is raving," she thought: "we must send for a doctor;
but for which one? Gedeonovsky was praising one the other day; he always
tells lies--but perhaps this time he spoke the truth." But when she was
convinced that Lisa was not ill, and was not raving, when she constantly
made the same answer to all her expostulations, Marfa Timofyevna was
alarmed and distressed in earnest. "But you don't know, my darling,"
she began to reason with her, "what a life it is in those convents! Why,
they would feed you, my own, on green hemp oil, and they would put you
in the coarsest linen, and make you go about in the cold; you will never
be able to bear all that, Lisa, darling. All this is Agafya's doing; she
led you astray. But then you know she began by living and lived for her
own pleasure; you must live, too. At least, let me die in peace, and
then do as you like. And who has ever heard of such a thing, for the
sake of such a--for the sake of a goat's beard, God forgive us!--for the
sake of a man--to go into a convent! Why, if you are so sick at heart,
go on a pilgrimage, offer prayers to some saint, have a Te Deum sung,
but don't put the black hood on your head, my dear creature, my good
girl."

And Marfa Timofyevna wept bitterly.

Lisa comforted her, wiped away her tears and wept herself, but remained
unshaken. In her despair Marfa Timofyevna had recourse to threats: to
tell her mother all about it... but that too was of no avail. Only at
the old lady's most earnest entreaties Lisa agreed to put off carrying
out her plan for six months. Marfa Timofyevna was obliged to promise
in return that if, within six months, she did not change her mind,
she would herself help her and would do all she could to gain Marya
Dmitrievna's consent.

In spite of her promise to bury herself in seclusion, at