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Updated: May 28, 2025
"She will marry Panshine. But even if she refuses him will it not be just the same as far as I am concerned?" Passing at that moment in front of a looking-glass, he just glanced at his face in it, and then shrugged his shoulders. Amid such thoughts as these the day passed swiftly by. The evening arrived, and Lavretsky went to the Kalitines.
The next day Lavretsky arrived at the Kalitines' after dinner, and found all the preparations going on there for an evening service. An old servant, dressed in a grey coat and wearing shoes, traversed the whole room deliberately and noiselessly, placed two slender candle-sticks with wax tapers in them before the icons, crossed himself, bowed, and silently left the room.
Panshine was not at the Kalitines' that evening, for the Governor had sent him somewhere into the country. Liza played unaccompanied, and that with great accuracy. Lemm grew lively and animated, rolled up a sheet of paper, and conducted the music. Maria Dmitrievna looked at him laughingly for a while, and then went off to bed. According to her, Beethoven was too agitating for her nerves.
About the middle of the next day Lavretsky went to the Kalitines'. On his way there he met Panshine, who galloped past on horseback, his hat pulled low over his eyes. At the Kalitines', Lavretsky was not admitted, for the first time since he had made acquaintance with the family.
"What am I," he then would think, "who am waiting here, as a raven waits for blood, for certain intelligence of my wife's death?" He went to the Kalitines' every day; but even there he was not more at his ease. The mistress of the house was evidently out of humor with him, and treated him with cold condescension.
An hour later he was already on the road to Vasilievskoe, and two hours later Varvara Pavlovna ordered the best carriage on hire in the town to be got for her, put on a simple straw hat with a black veil, and a modest mantilla, left Justine in charge of Ada, and went to the Kalitines'. From the inquiries Justine had made, Madame Lavretsky had learnt that her husband was in the habit of going there every day.
Here is a picture of what was taking place at eleven o'clock that same evening in the Kalitines' house. Down stairs, on the threshold of the drawing-room, Panshine was taking leave of Liza, and saying, as he held her hand in his: "You know who it is that attracts me here; you know why I am always coming to your house. Of what use are words when all is so clear?"
A nightingale had made its home in a large lilac bush which stood in the Kalitines' garden, and the first notes of its even-song made themselves heard during the pauses in the eloquent harangue; the first stars began to kindle in the rose-stained sky above the motionless tops of the lime trees. Presently Lavretsky rose and began to reply to Panshine. A warm dispute soon commenced.
One day Lavretsky was as usual at the Kalitines'. An overpoweringly hot afternoon had been followed by such a beautiful evening that Madame Kalitine, notwithstanding her usual aversion to a draught, ordered all the windows and the doors leading into the garden to be opened.
Lavretsky would have liked to kill himself just then. Katrin the cook brought them some bad coffee, and then, when eight o'clock struck, Lemm put on his hat and went out saying that he was to have given a lesson at the Kalitines' at ten o'clock, but that he would find a fitting excuse for going there sooner.
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