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Nastasia Carpovna had a weakness for all young men, and never could help blushing like a girl at the most innocent joke. Marfa Timofeevna could not have endured any thing like servility. "Ah, Fedia!" she began, as soon as she saw him "You didn't see my family last night. Please to admire them now; we are all met together for tea. This is our second, our feast-day tea. You may embrace us all.
All the house seemed teeming with life and overflowing with irrepressible merriment. As for the former mistress of the house, she had been laid in the grave long ago. Maria Dmitrievna died two years after Liza took the veil. Nor did Marfa Timofeevna long survive her niece; they rest side by side in the cemetery of the town. Nastasia Carpovna also was no longer alive.
Sometimes she looked round, at others she suddenly raised her eyes towards the ceiling. The whole affair evidently bored her. Marfa Timofeevna seemed pre-occupied. Nastasia Carpovna bowed down to the ground, and raised herself up again, with a sort of soft and modest sound.
But in spite of all this, she felt a certain kind of modest shame as if a stranger had entered her pure maiden chamber. Marfa Timofeevna came to her rescue. "Well, if you will not amuse him," she said, "who is to amuse him, poor fellow? I am too old for him; he is too clever for me; and as to Nastasia Carpovna, he is too old for her. It's only boys she cares for."
"And certainly the rogue knows how to fascinate her," broke in Marfa Timofeevna. "He has given her a snuff-box. Fedia, ask her for a pinch of snuff. You will see what a splendid snuff-box it is. There is a hussar on horseback on the lid. You had much better not try to exculpate yourself, my mother." Nastasia Carpovna could only wave her hands with a deprecatory air.
She said thou to Nastasia Carpovna, although she lived on a footing of equality with her but it was not for nothing that she was a Pestof. Marfa Timofeevna was perfectly well aware of the fact. "Tell me, please," Lavretsky began again. "Maria Dmitrievna was talking to me just now about that what's his name? Panshine. What sort of a man is he?"
And the cat, Matros, purred in the large chair by the side of the stocking and the ball of worsted; the long, thin flame of the little lamp feebly wavered in front of the holy picture; and in the next room, just the other side of the door, stood Nastasia Carpovna, and furtively wiped her eyes with a check pocket-handkerchief, rolled up into a sort of ball.
She went up to that old lady in church one day, Nastasia Carpovna had pleased Marfa Timofeevna by praying as the latter lady said, "in very good taste" began to talk to her, and invited her home to a cup of tea. From that day she parted with her no more. Nastasia Carpovna, whose father had belonged to the class of poor gentry, was a widow without children.
No one knows, no eye has seen or ever will see, how the grain which has been confided to the earth's bosom becomes instinct with vitality, and ripens into stirring, blossoming life. Ten o'clock struck, and Marfa Timofeevna went up-stairs to her room with Nastasia Carpovna.
"Is she seriously inclined?" "Yes, Fedia, very much so. More than you or I, Fedia." "And do you mean to say you are not seriously inclined?" lisped Nastasia Carpovna. "If you have not gone to the early mass to-day, you will go to the later one." "Not a bit of it. Thou shalt go alone. I've grown lazy, my mother," answered Marfa Timofeevna. "I am spoiling myself terribly with tea drinking."
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