assembled in the dining room. Valentina
Mihailovna greeted him in a friendly manner; she seemed to him
marvellously beautiful in her morning gown. Mariana looked stern and
serious as usual.

Exactly at ten o'clock Nejdanov gave Kolia his first lesson before
Valentina Mihailovna, who had asked him if she might be present, and sat
very quietly the whole time. Kolia proved an intelligent boy; after the
inevitable moments of incertitude and discomfort, the lesson went
off very well, and Valentina Mihailovna was evidently satisfied with
Nejdanov, and spoke to him several times kindly. He tried to hold aloof
a little--but not too much so. Valentina Mihailovna was also present at
the second lesson, this time on Russian history. She announced, with
a smile, that in this subject she needed instruction almost as much
as Kolia. She conducted herself just as quietly as she had done at the
first lesson.

Between two and five o'clock Nejdanov stayed in his own room writing
letters to his St. Petersburg friends. He was neither bored nor in
despair; his overstrained nerves had calmed down somewhat. However, they
were set on edge again at dinner, although Kollomietzev was not present,
and the kind attention of host and hostess remained unchanged; but it
was this very attention that made Nejdanov angry. To make matters worse,
the old maiden lady, Anna Zaharovna, was obviously antagonistic, Mariana
continued serious, and Kolia rather unceremoniously kicked him under the
table. Sipiagin also seemed out of sorts. He was extremely dissatisfied
with the manager of his paper mill, a German, to whom he paid a large
salary. Sipiagin began by abusing Germans in general, then announced
that he was somewhat of a Slavophil, though not a fanatic, and mentioned
a certain young Russian, by the name of Solomin, who, it was said,
had successfully established another mill belonging to a neighbouring
merchant; he was very anxious to meet this Solomin.

Kollomietzev came in the evening; his own estate was only about ten
miles away from "Arjanov," the name of Sipiagin's village. There also
came a certain justice of the peace, a squire, of the kind so admirably
described in the two famous lines of Lermontov--

Behind a cravat, frock coat to the heels Moustache, squeaky voice--and
heavy glance.

Another guest arrived, with a dejected look, without a tooth in his
head, but very accurately dressed. After him came the local doctor, a
very bad doctor, who w