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Panshin exchanged cordial greetings with every one in the room; he shook hands with Marya Dmitrievna and Lisaveta Mihalovna, clapped Gedeonovsky lightly on the shoulder, and turning round on his heels, put his hand on Lenotchka's head and kissed her on the forehead. "Aren't you afraid to ride such a vicious horse?" Marya Dmitrievna questioned him.
He ended by proposing to Marya Dmitrievna a game of picquet. "What! on such an evening?" she replied feebly. She ordered the cards to be brought in, however. Panshin tore open a new pack of cards with a loud crash, and Lisa and Lavretsky both got up as if by agreement, and went and placed themselves near Marfa Timofyevna.
"Une nature poetique," observed Marya Dmitrievna, "cannot, to be sure, cultivate... et puis, it is your vocation, Vladimir Nikolaich, to do everything en grand." This was too much even for Panshin: he grew confused and changed the conversation. He tried to turn it upon the beauty of the starlit sky, the music of Schubert; nothing was successful.
"But I think " began Maria Dmitrievna, adding, however, "Well, just as you like." It was settled that Lenochka and Shurochka should go. Marfa Timofeevna refused to take part in the excursion. "It's a bore to me, my dear," she said, "to move my old bones; and there's nowhere, I suppose, in your house where I could pass the night; besides, I never can sleep in a strange bed.
Maria Dmitrievna admiringly agreed with him. "What a clever man to have talking in my house!" she thought. Liza kept silence, leaning back in the recess of the window. Lavretsky kept silence too. Marfa Timofeevna, who was playing cards in a corner with her friend, grumbled something to herself. Panshine walked up and down the room, speaking well, but with a sort of suppressed malice.
Only Shurochka wouldn't let you, and the cat would scratch you. Is it to-day you go?" "Yes," said Lavretsky, sitting down on a low chair. "I have just taken leave of Maria Dmitrievna. I saw Lizaveta Mikhailovna too." "Call her Liza, my dear. Why should she be Mikhailovna for you? But do sit still, or you will break Shurochka's chair." "She was on her way to church," continued Lavretsky.
While she was deliberating which day to fix, Lavretsky went up to Lisa, and, still greatly moved, whispered to her aside: "Thank you, you are a good girl; I was to blame." And her pale face glowed with a bright, shy smile; her eyes smiled too up to that instant she had been afraid she had offended him. "Vladimir Nikolaitch can come with us?" inquired Marya Dmitrievna.
Natasha kept looking uneasily at everybody with wide-open eyes, as if wishing to intercept every glance directed toward her, and tried to appear the same as usual. After breakfast, which was her best time, Marya Dmitrievna sat down in her armchair and called Natasha and the count to her. "Well, friends, I have now thought the whole matter over and this is my advice," she began.
Marya Dmitrievna did not in reality trouble herself about Lisa any more than her husband, though she had boasted to Lavretsky that she alone had educated her children. She dressed her up like a doll, stroked her on the head before visitors and called her a clever child and a darling to her face, and that was all. Any kind of continuous care was too exhausting for the indolent lady.
Maria Dmitrievna was asleep, the footman declared; her head ached, Marfa Timofeevna and Lizaveta Mikhailovna were not at home. Lavretsky walked round the outside of the garden in the vague hope of meeting Liza, but he saw no one. Two hours later he returned to the house, but received the same answer as before; moreover, the footman looked at him in a somewhat marked manner.
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