"Is she still in the same convent?" Lavretsky asked, not without an effort.
"Yes."
"Does she ever write to you?"
"No, never. We get news of her from other quarters."
A profound silence suddenly ensued. "An angel has noiselessly flown past," they all thought.
"Won't you go into the garden?" said Kalitine, addressing Lavretsky.
"It is very pleasant now, although we have neglected it a little."
Lavretsky went into the garden, and the first thing he saw there was that very bench on which he and Liza had once passed a few happy moments—moments that never repeated themselves. It had grown black and warped, but still he recognized it, and that feeling took possession of his heart which is unequalled as well for sweetness as for bitterness—the feeling of lively regret, for vanished youth, for once familiar happiness.
He walked by the side of the young people along the alleys. The lime-trees looked older than before, having grown a little taller during the last eight years, and casting a denser shade. All the underwood, also, had grown higher, and the raspberry-bushes had spread vigorously, and the hazel copse was thickly tangled. From every side exhaled a fresh odor from the forest and the wood, from the grass and the lilacs.
"What a capital place for a game at Puss in the Corner!" suddenly cried Lenochka, as they entered upon a small grassy lawn surrounded by lime-trees. "There are just five of us."
"But have you forgotten Fedor Ivanovich?" asked her brother; "or is it yourself you have not counted?"