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"Well, but about Liza?" asked Lavretsky. "Is he indifferent to her?" "She seems to like him and as to the rest, God knows. Another person's heart, you know, is a dark forest, and more especially a young girl's. Look at Shurochka there! Come and analyze her's. Why has she been hiding herself, but not going away, ever since you came in?"
Until that day, Panshin had always treated Lavretsky, not exactly haughtily, but at least condescendingly; but Lisa, in describing her expedition of the previous day to Panshin, had spoken of Lavretsky as an excellent and clever man, that was enough; he felt bound to make a conquest of an "excellent man."
Its stable became stocked with horses; comfortable furniture was brought to it from Lavriki; and the town supplied it with wine, and with books and newspapers. In short, Lavretsky provided himself with every thing he wanted, and began to lead a life which was neither exactly that of an ordinary landed proprietor, nor exactly that of a regular hermit.
That gentleman bowed to him silently, while the lady of the house exclaimed, "Well, this is an unexpected pleasure," and slightly frowned. Lavretsky sat down beside her and began looking at her cards. "So you can play piquet?" she asked, with a shade of secret vexation in her voice, and then remarked that she had thrown away a wrong card.
Her pale face, her fixed eyes, and all her gestures expressed an unutterable bewilderment. Lavretsky stood before her. "I did not mean to come here," he began; "something brought me. I I love you," he uttered, in involuntary terror. She tried to get up she could not; she covered her face with her hands. "Lisa!" murmured Lavretsky. "Lisa," he repeated, and fell at her feet.
Lavretsky gazed at her pure, somewhat severe profile, at her hair drawn back behind her ears, at her soft cheeks, which glowed like a little child's, and thought, "Oh, how sweet you are, bending over my pond!" Lisa did not turn to him, but looked at the water, half frowning, to keep the sun out of her eyes, half smiling. The shade of the lime-tree near fell upon both.
"Yes, like your father, and you yourself do not suspect it." "After that," exclaimed Lavretsky, "I have the right to call you a fanatic." "Alas!" replied Mihalevitch with a contrite air, "I have not so far deserved such an exalted title, unhappily." "I have found out now what to call you," cried the same Mihalevitch, at three o'clock in the morning.
He began to talk about music, then about Liza, and then again about music. He seemed to pronounce his words more slowly when he spoke of Liza. Lavretsky turned the conversation to the subject of his compositions, and offered, half in jest, to write a libretto for him. "Hm! a libretto!" answered Lemm. "No; that is beyond me.
She is not proud, high-spirited, and haughty; she does not constantly "draw herself up to her full height," a species of gymnastics in great favour with most fiction-heroines. But she draws all men unto herself. She is beloved by the two opposite extremes of manhood Panshin and Lavretsky.
Marya Dmitrievna did not give Lavretsky an over-cordial welcome when he made his appearance the following day. "Upon my word, he's always in and out," she thought. She did not much care for him, and Panshin, under whose influence she was, had been very artful and disparaging in his praises of him the evening before.