e!" exclaimed Varvara Pavlovna,
lifting her handkerchief to her eyes.

At this moment the page announced Gedeonovsky's arrival, and the
old gossip came in smiling, and bowing profoundly. Maria Dmitrievna
introduced him to her visitor. At first he was somewhat abashed, but
Varvara Pavlovna behaved to him with such coquettish respectfulness
that his ears soon began to tingle, and amiable speeches and gossiping
stories began to flow uninterruptedly from his lips.

Varvara Pavlovna listened to him, slightly smiling at times, then by
degrees she too began to talk. She spoke in a modest way about Paris,
about her travels, about Baden; she made Maria Dmitrievna laugh two or
three times, and each time she uttered a gentle sigh afterwards, as if
she were secretly reproaching herself for her unbecoming levity; she
asked leave to bring Ada to the house; she took off her gloves, and
with her smooth white hands she pointed out how and where flounces,
ruches, lace, and so forth, were worn; she promised to bring a bottle
of new English scent--the Victoria essence--and was as pleased as a
child when Maria Dmitrievna consented to accept it as a present;
and she melted into tears at the remembrance of the emotion she had
experienced when she heard the first Russian bells.

"So profoundly did they sink into my very heart," she said.

At that moment Liza came into the room.

All that day, ever since the moment when, cold with dismay, Liza had
read Lavretsky's note, she had been preparing herself for an interview
with his wife. She foresaw that she would see her, and she determined
not to avoid her, by way of inflicting upon herself a punishment for
what she considered her culpable hopes. The unexpected crisis which
had taken place in her fate had profoundly shaken her. In the course
of about a couple of hours her face seemed to have grown thin. But
she had not shed a single tear. "It is what you deserve," she said to
herself, repressing, though not without difficulty, and at the cost
of considerable agitation, certain bitter thoughts and evil impulses
which frightened her as they arose in her mind. "Well, I must go," she
thought, as soon as she heard of Madame Lavretsky's arrival, and she
went.

She stood outside the drawing-room door for a long time before she
could make up her mind to open it At last, saying to herself, "I am
guilty before her," she entered the room, and forced herself to look
at her, even forced herself to smile.