e servants he
learned that she had gone with her to the Kalitins'. This news both
startled and enraged him. "Evidently, Varvara Pavlovna is determined not
to give me a chance to live,"--he thought, with the excitement of wrath in
his heart. He began to stride to and fro, incessantly thrusting aside with
his feet and hands the child's toys, the books, and the feminine
appurtenances which came in his way; he summoned Justine, and ordered her
to remove all that "rubbish."--"_Oui, monsieur_,"--said she, with a
grimace, and began to put the room in order, gracefully bending, and
giving Lavretzky to understand, by every movement, that she regarded him
as an unlicked bear. With hatred he watched her worn but still "piquant,"
sneering, Parisian face, her white cuffs, her silken apron, and light cap.
He sent her away, at last, and after long wavering (Varvara Pavlovna
still did not return) he made up his mind to betake himself to the
Kalitins',--not to Marya Dmitrievna--(not, on any account, would he
have entered her drawing-room, that drawing-room where his wife was), but
to Marfa Timofeevna; he remembered that a rear staircase from the maids'
entrance led straight to her rooms. This is what Lavretzky did. Chance
favoured him: in the yard he met Schurotchka; she conducted him to Marfa
Timofeevna. He found her, contrary to her wont, alone; she was sitting in
a corner, with hair uncovered, bowed over, with her hands clasped in her
lap. On perceiving Lavretzky, the old woman was greatly alarmed, rose
briskly to her feet, and began to walk hither and yon in the room, as
though in search of her cap.

"Ah, here thou art, here thou art,"--she began, avoiding his gaze, and
bustling about--"well, how do you do? Come, what now? What is to be done?
Where wert thou yesterday? Well, she has come,--well, yes. Well, we must
just ... somehow or other."

Lavretzky dropped into a chair.

"Come, sit down, sit down,"--went on the old woman.--"Thou hast come
straight up-stairs. Well, yes, of course. What? thou art come to look at
me? Thanks."

The old woman was silent for a while; Lavretzky did not know what to say
to her; but she understood him.

"Liza ... yes, Liza was here just now,"--went on Marfa Timofeevna,
tying and untying the cords of her reticule. "She is not quite well.
Schurotchka, where art thou? Come hither, my mother, why canst thou not
sit still? And I have a headache. It must be from _that_--from the
singing and from the musi