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An exquisite miniature in water-colour of Liza at twelve years old had been sent nine years before to Stepan Trofimovitch from Petersburg by the Drozdovs. He had kept it hanging on his wall ever since. "Was I such a pretty child? Can that really have been my face?" She stood up, and with the portrait in her hand looked in the looking-glass.
And how's Shatov? Is he just the same?" "Irascible, mais bon." "I can't endure your Shatov. He's spiteful and he thinks too much of himself." "How is Darya Pavlovna?" "You mean Dasha? What made you think of her?" Varvara Petrovna looked at him inquisitively. "She's quite well. I left her with the Drozdovs. I heard something about your son in Switzerland. Nothing good."
But that was only for a moment, next day he was worse and more ill-humoured than ever. But what I was most vexed with him for was that he could not bring himself to call on the Drozdovs, as he should have done on their arrival, to renew the acquaintance of which, so we heard they were themselves desirous, since they kept asking about him. It was a source of daily distress to him.
And now you can ferret it out for yourself; I'll say nothing more; good-bye." Stepan Trofimovitch was awaiting me with hysterical impatience. It was an hour since he had returned. I found him in a state resembling intoxication; for the first five minutes at least I thought he was drunk. Alas, the visit to the Drozdovs had been the finishing-stroke. "Mon ami!
There were some among them who already detested her, and principally for her pride. The Drozdovs had scarcely begun to pay calls, which mortified them, though the real reason for the delay was Praskovya Ivanovna's invalid state. They detested her in the second place because she was a relative of the governor's wife, and thirdly because she rode out every day on horseback.
The letter was brief, and the object of it was perfectly clear, though it contained only a plain statement of the above-mentioned facts without drawing any inferences from them. She returned in July, alone, leaving Dasha with the Drozdovs. She brought us the news that the Drozdovs themselves had promised to arrive among us by the end of August.
I must mention, by the way, that the Drozdovs had by this time succeeded in paying all the visits they had omitted at first. Every one now confidently considered Lizaveta Nikolaevna a most ordinary girl, who paraded her delicate nerves. Her fainting on the day of Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch's arrival was explained now as due to her terror at the student's outrageous behaviour.
"He has been travelling to perfect himself in his speciality and has come to us because he has good reasons to expect a job on the building of our railway bridge, and he's now waiting for an answer about it. He knows the Drozdovs and Lizaveta Nikolaevna, through Pyotr Stepanovitch." The engineer sat, as it were, with a ruffled air, and listened with awkward impatience.
"That 'there shall be nothing of the sort in future, and, avec cette morgue.... His wife, Yulia Mihailovna, we shall behold at the end of August, she's coming straight from Petersburg." "From abroad. We met there." "Vraiment?" "In Paris and in Switzerland. She's related to the Drozdovs." "Related! What an extraordinary coincidence!
After their morning tea, according to their invariable custom, they sat down to needlework. Varvara Petrovna demanded from her a full account of her impressions abroad, especially of nature, of the inhabitants, of the towns, the customs, their arts and commerce of everything she had time to observe. She asked no questions about the Drozdovs or how she had got on with them.
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