which was lying on the table where Lavretsky had forgotten it.

Lavretsky shuddered. The _feuilleton_ had a pencil mark against it.
Varvara Pavlovna gazed at him with an expression of even greater
humility than before on her face. She looked very handsome at that
moment. Her grey dress, made by a Parisian milliner, fitted closely
to her pliant figure, which seemed almost like that of a girl of
seventeen. Her soft and slender neck, circled by a white collar, her
bosom's gentle movement under the influence of her steady breathing,
her arms and hands, on which she wore neither bracelets nor rings,
her whole figure, from her lustrous hair to the tip of the scarcely
visible _bottine_, all was so artistic!

Lavretsky eyed her with a look of hate, feeling hardly able to
abstain from crying _brava_, hardly able to abstain from striking her
down--and went away.

An hour later he was already on the road to Vasilievskoe, and two
hours later Varvara Pavlovna ordered the best carriage on hire in the
town to be got for her, put on a simple straw hat with a black veil,
and a modest mantilla, left Justine in charge of Ada, and went to the
Kalitines'. From the inquiries Justine had made, Madame Lavretsky had
learnt that her husband was in the habit of going there every day.

XXXVI.

The day on which Lavretsky's wife arrived in O.--sad day for
him--was also a day of trial for Liza. Before she had had time to go
down-stairs and say good morning to her mother, the sound of a horse's
hoofs was heard underneath the window, and, with a secret feeling of
alarm, she saw Panshine ride into the court-yard. "It is to get a
definite answer that he has come so early," she thought; and she
was not deceived. After taking a turn through the drawing-room, he
proposed to go into the garden with her; and when there he asked her
how his fate was to be decided.

Liza summoned up her courage, and told him that she could not be his
wife. He listened to all she had to say, turning himself a little
aside, with his hat pressed down over his eyes. Then, with perfect
politeness, but in an altered tone, he asked her if that was her final
decision, and whether he had not, in some way or other, been the cause
of such a change in her ideas. Then he covered his eyes with his hand
for a moment, breathed one quick sigh, and took his hand away from his
face.

"I wanted to follow the beaten track," he said sadly; "I wanted to
choose a companion for myself