ed voice just
beside them.

Before them stood Lizabetha Prokofievna.

"Why, it's true that I am going to marry Gavrila Ardalionovitch, that I
love him and intend to elope with him tomorrow," cried Aglaya, turning
upon her mother. "Do you hear? Is your curiosity satisfied? Are you
pleased with what you have heard?"

Aglaya rushed away homewards with these words.

"H'm! well, YOU are not going away just yet, my friend, at all events,"
said Lizabetha, stopping the prince. "Kindly step home with me, and let
me have a little explanation of the mystery. Nice goings on, these! I
haven't slept a wink all night as it is."

The prince followed her.

IX.

ARRIVED at her house, Lizabetha Prokofievna paused in the first room.
She could go no farther, and subsided on to a couch quite exhausted; too
feeble to remember so much as to ask the prince to take a seat. This was
a large reception-room, full of flowers, and with a glass door leading
into the garden.

Alexandra and Adelaida came in almost immediately, and looked
inquiringly at the prince and their mother.

The girls generally rose at about nine in the morning in the country;
Aglaya, of late, had been in the habit of getting up rather earlier and
having a walk in the garden, but not at seven o'clock; about eight or a
little later was her usual time.

Lizabetha Prokofievna, who really had not slept all night, rose at about
eight on purpose to meet Aglaya in the garden and walk with her; but she
could not find her either in the garden or in her own room.

This agitated the old lady considerably; and she awoke her other
daughters. Next, she learned from the maid that Aglaya had gone into
the park before seven o'clock. The sisters made a joke of Aglaya's last
freak, and told their mother that if she went into the park to look
for her, Aglaya would probably be very angry with her, and that she was
pretty sure to be sitting reading on the green bench that she had talked
of two or three days since, and about which she had nearly quarrelled
with Prince S., who did not see anything particularly lovely in it.

Arrived at the rendezvous of the prince and her daughter, and hearing
the strange words of the latter, Lizabetha Prokofievna had been
dreadfully alarmed, for many reasons. However, now that she had dragged
the prince home with her, she began to feel a little frightened at what
she had undertaken. Why should not Aglaya meet the prince in the
park and have a talk with