hands, and, holding her at arm's-length,
looked at her with feeling, then made the sign of the cross over her and
kissed her again.

"Well, good-bye, Liza" (there was almost the sound of tears in Varvara
Petrovna's voice), "believe that I shall never cease to love you
whatever fate has in store for you. God be with you. I have always
blessed His Holy Will...."

She would have added something more, but restrained herself and broke
off. Liza was walking back to her place, still in the same silence, as
it were plunged in thought, but she suddenly stopped before her mother.

"I am not going yet, mother. I'll stay a little longer at auntie's," she
brought out in a low voice, but there was a note of iron determination
in those quiet words.

"My goodness! What now?" wailed Praskovya Ivanovna, clasping her hands
helplessly. But Liza did not answer, and seemed indeed not to hear her;
she sat down in the same corner and fell to gazing into space again as
before.

There was a look of pride and triumph in Varvara Petrovna's face.

"Mavriky Nikolaevitch, I have a great favour to ask of you. Be so kind
as to go and take a look at that person downstairs, and if there is any
possibility of admitting him, bring him up here."

Mavriky Nikolaevitch bowed and went out. A moment later he brought in
Mr. Lebyadkin.

IV

I have said something of this gentleman's outward appearance. He was a
tall, curly-haired, thick-set fellow about forty with a purplish, rather
bloated and flabby face, with cheeks that quivered at every movement of
his head, with little bloodshot eyes that were sometimes rather crafty,
with moustaches and side-whiskers, and with an incipient double chin,
fleshy and rather unpleasant-looking. But what was most striking about
him was the fact that he appeared now wearing a dress-coat and clean
linen.

"There are people on whom clean linen is almost unseemly," as Liputin
had once said when Stepan Trofimovitch reproached him in jest for being
untidy. The captain had perfectly new black gloves too, of which he
held the right one in his hand, while the left, tightly stretched and
unbuttoned, covered part of the huge fleshy fist in which he held a
brand-new, glossy round hat, probably worn for the first time that day.
It appeared therefore that "the garb of love," of which he had shouted
to Shatov the day before, really did exist. All this, that is, the
dress-coat and clean linen, had been procured by Liputin's advic