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They sat down close by Marfa Timofeevna, and seemed to be following her game; nay, more, did actually follow it. But, meantime, their hearts grew full within them, and nothing escaped their senses for them the nightingale sang softly, and the stars burnt, and the trees whispered, steeped in slumberous calm, and lulled to rest by the warmth and softness of the summer night.
"And Elena Mikhailovna?" "Lenochka is in the garden also. Have you any news?" "Rather!" replied the visitor, slowly screwing up his eyes, and protruding his lips. "Hm! here is a piece of news, if you please, and a very startling one, too. Fedor Ivanovich Lavretsky has arrived." "Fedia!" exclaimed Marfa Timofeevna. "You're inventing, are you not?" "Not at all. I have seen him with my own eyes."
My own legs haven't dropped off yet. It certainly must be in my bed-room." And Marfa Timofeevna went away, after casting a side-glance at Lavretsky. At first she left the door open, but suddenly she returned and shut it again from the outside. Liza leant back in her chair and silently hid her face in her hands. Lavretsky remained standing where he was.
Her two daughters lived with her; her son was being educated in one of the best of the crown establishments at St. Petersburgh. The old lady who was sitting at the window with Maria Dmitrievna was her father's sister, the aunt with whom she had formerly spent so many lonely years at Pokrovskoe. Her name was Marfa Timofeevna Pestof.
He brought it round to the advantages of sugar making, about which he had lately read two French pamphlets; their contents he now proceeded to disclose, speaking with an air of great modesty, but without saying a single word about the sources of his information. "Why, there's Fedia!" suddenly exclaimed the voice of Marfa Timofeevna in the next room, the door of which had been left half open.
"He had told me that his wife was dead." Marfa Timofeevna made the sign of the cross. "The kingdom of heaven be to her," she whispered. "She was a frivolous woman. But don't let's think about that. So that's how it is. I see, he's a widower. Oh yes, he's going ahead. He has killed one wife, and now he's after a second. A nice sort of person he is, to be sure.
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."
Madame Kalitine arrived, accompanied by Gedeonovsky. Then came Marfa Timofeevna and Liza, and after them all the other members of the family. Afterwards, also, there arrived the lover of music, Madame Belenitsine, a thin little woman, with an almost childish little face, pretty but worn, a noisy black dress, a particolored fan, and thick gold bracelets.
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.
Marfa Timofeevna flushed, and with her cap-strings untied, began to complain to him of her partner Gedeonovsky, who, according to her, had not yet learnt his steps. "Card-playing," she said, "is evidently a very different thing from gossiping." Meanwhile Gedeonovsky never left off blinking and mopping himself with his handkerchief.
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