You were a child then. I’m Lavretsky. Isyour mother at home? May I see her?’

‘Mother will be very glad,’ Liza replied. ‘She’s heard about your arrival.’

‘It seems to me you’re called Elizaveta, aren’t you?’ Lavretsky asked, climbing the porch steps.

‘Yes.’

‘I remember you well. Even then you had a face one does not easily forget. In those days I used to bring you sweets.’

Liza blushed and thought what a strange person he was. Lavretsky stopped for a moment in the hall. Liza went into the drawing-room, where Panshin’s voice and laugh resounded as he related some town gossip to Marya Dmitrievna and Gedeonovsky who had just returned from their walk in the garden, and Panshin himself laughed loudly at what he was telling. At Lavretsky’s name Marya Dmitrievna became quite flustered, grew pale and walked across to meet him.

‘Hello, hello, my dear cousin!’ she exclaimed in a traily and almost tearful voice. ‘How glad I am to see you!’

‘How do you do, my kind cousin,’ Lavretsky responded and affectionately pressed her outstretched hand. ‘Is the good Lord treating you kindly?’

‘Sit down, do sit down, my dear Fyodor Ivanych. Ah, how glad I am! Let me first of all introduce you to my daughter Liza…’

‘I have already introduced myself to Lizaveta Mikhay-lovna,’ Lavretsky interrupted her.

‘Monsieur Panshin… Sergey Petrovich Gedeonovsky…. Do please sit down. I look at you and, you know, I can hardly believe my eyes! How are you keeping?’

‘As you can see, I am flourishing. And you, cousin, I would say – at the risk of offending you – have looked after yourself in the last eight years.’

‘To think we haven’t seen each other for such a time,’ Marya Dmitrievna mused. ‘Where have you just come from? Where have you left… That’s to say, I mean,’ she hurriedly corrected herself, ‘I mean, will you be staying with us long?’

‘I’ve just come from Berlin,’ Lavretsky replied, ‘and tomorrow I’ll be going off to the country – probably for a long time.’

‘You will be living in Lavriki, of course?’

‘No, not in Lavriki. I have a little village about fifteen miles from here; that’s where I’ll be going.’

‘Is that the village you received from Glafira Petrovna?’

‘It is.’

‘Forgive me, Fyodor Ivanych, but at Lavriki you have such a delightful house!’

Lavretsky’s brows knit very slightly.

‘True…. But there’s a small place in that village, and I don’t need anything more at present. That’ll be the most suitable place for me now.’

Marya Dmitrievna was again so put out that she straightened herself in her chair and spread her hands wide. Panshin came to her aid and engaged Lavretsky in conversation. Marya Dmitrievna grew calmer, sank back into her armchair and only made occasional contributions to the conversation; but all the while she looked so pityingly at her guest, sighed so meaningfully and gave such despondent shakes of the head that he could finally stand it no longer and asked her fairly sharply whether she was all right.

‘Yes, thank God,’ Marya Dmitrievna answered. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘It seemed to me you were not yourself, that’s all.’

Marya Dmitrievna assumed a dignified and slightly injured look. ‘If that’s how things are,’ she thought, ‘then I’m past caring. To you, my good man, it’s obviously just like water off a duck’s back; some other person would have wasted away with grief, but you’re plumper than ever.’ When she talked to herself, Marya Dmitrievna did not stand on ceremony; aloud she was more refined.

In fact, Lavretsky bore no resemblance to a victim of fate. His red-cheeked, very Russian face, with the large white forehead, slightly thick nose and broad regular lips, literally exuded the healthy life of the steppes and a powerful, durable strength. He had a magnificent build, and his fair hair curled on his head like a boy’s. Only in his blue, protruding and rather immobile eyes could be discerned a cross between pensiveness and tiredness, and his voice somehow sounded a little too smooth.

Panshin meanwhile continued to keep the conversation going. He raised the topic of sugar refining, about which he had recently read a couple of French pamphlets, and with quiet modesty he undertook to expound their contents without, however, mentioning a single word about them.

‘It must be Fedya!’ Marfa Timofeyevna’s voice was suddenly heard to exclaim beyond the half-open door of the next room. ‘It is Fedya!’ And the old woman rushed into the drawing-room. Lavretsky did not succeed in rising from his chair before she had embraced him.