“A model young man, one may say,” remarked Gedeonovsky.

Varvara Pavlovna suddenly began to play a noisy waltz by Strauss, beginning with so loud and quick a trill that Gedeonovsky fairly started.  Right in the middle of the waltz she passed abruptly into a plaintive air, and ended with the Fra poco out of Lucia.  She had suddenly remembered that joyful music was not in keeping with her position.

Maria Dmitrievna was deeply touched by the air from Lucia, in which great stress was laid upon the sentimental passages.

“What feeling!” she whispered to Gedeonovsky.

“A Sylphide!” repeated Gedeonovsky, lifting his eyes to heaven.

The dinner hour arrived.  Marfa Timofeevna did not come down from up-stairs until the soup was already placed on the table.  She behaved very coldly to Varvara Pavlovna, answering her amiable speeches with broken phrases, and never even looking at her.  Varvara soon perceived that there was no conversation to be got out of that old lady, so she gave up talking to her.  On the other hand Madame Kalitine became still more caressing in her behavior towards her guest.  She was vexed by her aunt’s rudeness.

After all, it was not only Varvara that the old lady would not look at.  She did not once look at Liza either, although her eyes almost glowed with a meaning light.  Pale, almost yellow, there she sat, with compressed lips, looking as if she were made of stone, and would eat nothing.

As for Liza, she seemed calm, and was so in reality.  Her heart was quieter than it had been.  A strange callousness, the callousness of the condemned, had come over her.

During dinner Varvara Pavlovna said little.  She seemed to have become timid again, and her face wore an expression of modest melancholy.  Gedeonovsky was the only person who kept the conversation alive, relating several of his stories, though from time to time he looked timidly at Marfa Timofeevna and coughed.  That cough always seized him whenever he was going to embellish the truth in her presence.  But this time she did not meddle with him, never once interrupted him.

After dinner it turned out that Varvara Pavlovna was very fond of the game of preference.  Madame Kalitine was so pleased at this that she felt quite touched and inwardly thought, “Why, what a fool Fedor Ivanovich must be!  Fancy not having been able to comprehend such a woman!”

She sat down to cards with Varvara and Gedeonov sky; but Marfa Timofeevna carried off Liza to her room up-stairs, saying that the girl “had no face left,” and she was sure her head must be aching.

“Yes, her head aches terribly,” said Madame Kalitine, addressing Varvara Pavlovna, and rolling her eyes.  “I often have such headaches myself.”

“Really!” answered Varvara Pavlovna.

Liza entered her aunt’s room, and sank on a chair perfectly worn out.  For a long time Marfa Timofeevna looked at her in silence, then she quietly knelt down before her, and began, still quite silently, to kiss her hands—­first one, and then the other.