convinced you. Fedor Ivanich,
God will reward you for your goodness! Now from my hands receive your
wife!"

Lavretsky jumped up from his chair scarcely knowing what he was doing.
Maria Dmitrievna had risen also, and had passed rapidly to the
other side of the screen, from behind which she brought out Madame
Lavretsky. Pale, half lifeless, with downcast eyes, that lady seemed
as if she had surrendered her whole power of thinking or willing for
herself, and had given herself over entirely into the hands of Maria
Dmitrievna.

Lavretsky recoiled a pace.

"You have been there all this time!" he exclaimed.

"Don't blame her," Maria Dmitrievna hastened to say. "She wouldn't
have stayed for any thing; but I made her stay; I put her behind the
screen. She declared that it would make you angrier than ever; but I
wouldn't even listen to her. I know you better than she does. Take
then from my hands your wife! Go to him, Varvara; have no fear; fall
at your husband's feet" (here she gave Varvara's arm a pull), "and may
my blessing--"

"Stop, Maria Dmitrievna!" interposed Lavretsky, in a voice shaking
with emotion. "You seem to like sentimental scenes." (Lavretsky was
not mistaken; from her earliest school-days Maria Dmitrievna had
always been passionately fond of a touch of stage effect.) "They
may amuse you, but to other people they may prove very unpleasant.
However, I am not going to talk to you. In _this_ scene you do not
play the leading part."

"What is it _you_ want from me, Madame?" he added, turning to his
wife. "Have I not done for you all that I could? Do not tell me that
it was not you who got up this scene. I should not believe you. You
know that I cannot believe you. What is it you want? You are clever.
You do nothing without an object. You must feel that to live with you,
as I used formerly to live, is what I am not in a position to do--not
because I am angry with you, but because I have become a different
man. I told you that the very day you returned; and at that time
you agreed with me in your own mind. But, perhaps, you wish to
rehabilitate yourself in public opinion. Merely to live in my house is
too little for you; you want to live with me under the same roof. Is
it not so?"

"I want you to pardon me," replied Varvara Pavlovna, without lifting
her eyes from the ground.

"She wants you to pardon her," repeated Maria Dmitrievna.

"And not for my own sake, but for Ada's," whispered Varvara.

"Not for