Maria Dmitrievna fairly gave way.
"Vous êtes charmante," she said. But why don't you take off your bonnet and gloves?"
"What! You allow me?" asked Varvara Pavlovna, gently clasping her hands with an air of deep emotion.
"Of course. You will dine with us, I hope. I—I will introduce my daughter to you." (Maria Dmitrievna felt embarrassed for a moment, but then, "Well, so be it," she thought.) "She happens not to be quite well to-day.'
"Oh! ma tante, how kind you are!" 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.