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Marfa Timofyevna took leave of her; she detested Glafira, and in the course of one day had fallen out with her three times. It was a painful and embarrassing position at first for poor Malanya, but, after a while, she learnt to bear it, and grew used to her father-in-law.
It looked very old, but it was good for another fifty years or more. Lavretsky walked through all the rooms, and, to the great disquiet of the faded old flies which clung to the cornices without moving, their backs covered with white dust, he had the windows thrown open everywhere. Since the death of Glafira Petrovna, no one had opened them.
But just see! your grandfather, Peter Andreich, provided himself with a stone mansion, but he lived worse than his father, and got himself no satisfaction, but spent all his money, and now there is nothing to remember him by not so much as a silver spoon has come down to us from him; and for all that is left, one must thank Glafira Petrovna's care."
Besides, Glafira envied her brother, he was so well educated, spoke such good French with a Parisian accent, while she was scarcely able to pronounce "bon jour" or "comment vous portez-vous." To be sure, her parents did not know any French, but that was no comfort to her.
"I want, above all, to make a man of him un homme," he said to Glafira Petrovna "and not only a man, but a Spartan." This plan he began to carry out by dressing his boy in Highland costume. The twelve-year-old little fellow had to go about with bare legs, and with a cock's feather in his cap.
"No, not at Lavriky; I have a little place twenty miles from here: I am going there." "Is that the little estate that came to you from Glafira Petrovna?" "Yes." "Really, Fedor Ivanitch! You have such a magnificent house at Lavriky." Lavretsky knitted his brows a little. "Yes... but there's a small lodge in this little property, and I need nothing more for a time.
It reached a point when Piotr even agreed to make a journey with Ostrov to the monastery. Glafira Pavlovna Konopatskaya, the rich widow of a general, was an energetic, power-loving woman, and enjoyed considerable influence in town. She was a most generous contributor to the various enterprises of the Black Hundred.
She liked being driven with fast-trotting horses, and was ready to play cards from morning till evening, and would always keep the score of the pennies she had lost or won hidden under her hand when her husband came near the card-table; but all her dowry, her whole fortune, she had put absolutely at his disposal. She bore him two children, a son Ivan, the father of Fedor, and a daughter Glafira.
When Marfa Timofeevna came to see her old pupil, she produced a favorable impression on Varvara Pavlovna. But Varvara was not at all to the old lady's liking. Nor did the young mistress of the house get on comfortably with Glafira Petrovna. She herself would have been content to leave Glafira in peace, but the general was anxious to get his hand into the management of his son-in-law's affairs.
He was twenty-three years old; how terribly, how imperceptibly quickly those twenty-three years had passed by!... Life was opening before him. After burying his father and intrusting to the unchanged Glafira Petrovna the management of his estate and superintendence of his bailiffs, young Lavretsky went to Moscow, whither he felt drawn by a vague but strong attraction.
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