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"You had better have played your romance over again," replied Lemm; then, escaping from Panshine's hold he went out of the room. Liza ran after him, and caught him on the steps. "Christopher Fedorovich, I want to speak to you," she said in German, as led him across the short green grass to the gate. "I have done you a wrong forgive me." Lemm made no reply.
He walked fast until he drew near to the house, but then he slackened his pace. Panshine's carriage was standing before the door. "Well," thought Lavretsky, as he entered the house, "I will not be selfish." No one met him in-doors, and all seemed quiet in the drawing-room. He opened the door, and found that Madame Kalitine was playing piquet with Panshine.
Such expressions as, "That is what I should do if I were the Government," and, "You, as an intelligent man, doubtless agree with me," were always at the tip of his tongue. Lavretsky listened coldly to Panshine's eloquence. This handsome, clever, and unnecessarily elegant young man, with his serene smile, his polite voice, and his inquisitive eyes, was not to his liking.
"Maestro," said Lavretsky, among other things, "you will soon have to compose a festal cantata." "On what occasion?" "Why, on that of Mr. Panshine's marriage with Liza. Didn't you observe what attention he paid her yesterday? All goes smoothly with them evidently." "That will never be!" exclaimed Lemm. "Why?" "Because it's impossible.
But as to your putting Panshine's nose out of joint, why I think you're a good girl for that. But don't go sitting out at night with men creatures. Don't make me wretched in my old age, and remember that I'm not altogether given over to fondling. I can bite, too A widower!" Marfa Timofeevna went away, and Liza sat down in a corner, and cried a long time. Her heart was heavy within her.
Varvara Pavlovna half-closed her velvety eyes, and, having said in a low voice, "But you are an artist also, un confrère," added still lower, "Venez!" and made a sign with her head in the direction of the piano. This single word, "Venez!" so abruptly spoken, utterly changed Panshine's appearance, as if by magic, in a single moment.
Down-stairs, meanwhile, the game of preference went on. Maria Dmitrievna was winning, and was in a very good humor. A servant entered and announced Panshine's arrival. Maria Dmitrievna let fall her cards, and fidgeted in her chair. Varvara Pavlovna looked at her with a half-smile, and then turned her eyes towards the door.
Liza entered the drawing-room, in which Panshine's voice and laugh were making themselves heard. He was communicating some piece of town gossip to Maria Dmitrievna and Gedeonovsky, both of whom had by this time returned from the garden, and he was laughly loudly at his own story. At the name of Lavretsky, Maria Dmitrievna became nervous and turned pale, but went forward to receive him.
In his conversations with Maria Dmitrievna, he frequently spoke of Panshine's remarkable faculties. "Why, really now, how can one help praising him?" he used to reason. "The young man is a success in the highest circles of society, and at the same time he does his work in the most perfect manner, and he isn't the least bit proud." And indeed, even at St.
In a word, the composition of the young dilettante delighted all who were in the room. But outside the drawing-room door, in the vestibule, there stood, looking on the floor, an old man who had just come into the house, to whom, judging from the expression of his face and the movements of his shoulders, Panshine's romance, though really pretty, did not afford much pleasure.
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