far off, you know."

"Yes, to be sure you are going to Vassilyevskoe. You don't care to stay
at Lavriky: well, that's your own affair, only mind you go and say a
prayer at our mother's grave, and our grandmother's too while you are
there. Out there in foreign parts you have picked up all kinds of ideas,
but who knows? Perhaps even in their graves they will feel that you have
come to them. And, Fedya, don't forget to have a service sung too for
Glafira Petrovna; here's a silver rouble for you. Take it, take it,
I want to pay for a service for her. I had no love for her in her
lifetime, but all the same there's no denying she was a girl of
character. She was a clever creature; and a good friend to you. And now
go and God be with you, before I weary you."

And Marfa Timofyevna embraced her nephew.

"And Lisa's not going to marry Panshin; don't you trouble yourself;
that's not the sort of husband she deserves."

"Oh, I'm not troubling myself," answered Lavretsky, and went away.

Chapter XVIII

Four days later, he set off for home. His coach rolled quickly along
the soft cross-road. There had been no rain for a fortnight; a fine milk
mist was diffused in the air and hung over the distant woods; a smell of
burning came from it. A multitude of darkish clouds with blurred edges
were creeping across the pale blue sky; a fairly strong breeze blew a
dry and steady gale, without dispelling the heat. Leaning back with
his head on the cushion and his arms crossed on his breast, Lavretsky
watched the furrowed fields unfolding like a fan before him, the willow
bushes as they slowly came into sight, and the dull ravens and rooks,
who looked sidelong with stupid suspicion at the approaching carriage,
the long ditches, overgrown with mugwort, wormwood, and mountain ash;
and as he watched the fresh fertile wilderness and solitude of this
steppe country, the greenness, the long slopes, and valleys with stunted
oak bushes, the grey villages, and scant birch trees,--the whole Russian
landscape, so long unseen by him, stirred emotion at once pleasant,
sweet and almost painful in his heart, and he felt weighed down by
a kind of pleasant oppression. Slowly his thoughts wandered; their
outlines were as vague and indistinct as the outlines of the clouds
which seemed to be wandering at random overhead. He remembered his
childhood, his mother; he remembered her death, how they had carried
him in to her, and how, clasping his head to her