as my observations go, the only freethinkers
among women are frights.'

The conversation was cut short at this point. Both the young men went
away immediately after supper. They were pursued by a nervously
malicious, but somewhat faint-hearted laugh from Madame Kukshin; her
vanity had been deeply wounded by neither of them having paid any
attention to her. She stayed later than any one at the ball, and at
four o'clock in the morning she was dancing a polka-mazurka with
Sitnikov in the Parisian style. This edifying spectacle was the final
event of the Governor's ball.

CHAPTER XV

'Let's see what species of mammalia this specimen belongs to,' Bazarov
said to Arkady the following day, as they mounted the staircase of the
hotel in which Madame Odintsov was staying. 'I scent out something
wrong here.'

'I'm surprised at you!' cried Arkady. 'What? You, you, Bazarov,
clinging to the narrow morality, which ...'

'What a funny fellow you are!' Bazarov cut him short, carelessly.
'Don't you know that "something wrong" means "something right" in my
dialect and for me? It's an advantage for me, of course. Didn't you
tell me yourself this morning that she made a strange marriage, though,
to my mind, to marry a rich old man is by no means a strange thing to
do, but, on the contrary, very sensible. I don't believe the gossip of
the town; but I should like to think, as our cultivated Governor says,
that it's well-grounded.'

Arkady made no answer, and knocked at the door of the apartments. A
young servant in livery, conducted the two friends in to a large room,
badly furnished, like all rooms in Russian hotels, but filled with
flowers. Soon Madame Odintsov herself appeared in a simple morning
dress. She seemed still younger by the light of the spring sunshine.
Arkady presented Bazarov, and noticed with secret amazement that he
seemed embarrassed, while Madame Odintsov remained perfectly tranquil,
as she had been the previous day. Bazarov himself was conscious of
being embarrassed, and was irritated by it. 'Here's a go!--frightened
of a petticoat!' he thought, and lolling, quite like Sitnikov, in an
easy-chair, he began talking with an exaggerated appearance of ease,
while Madame Odintsov kept her clear eyes fixed on him.

Anna Sergyevna Odintsov was the daughter of Sergay Nikolaevitch Loktev,
notorious for his personal beauty, his speculations, and his gambling
propensities, who after cutting a figure and making a sens