“Ah! how glad I am to hear you say that, Fedor Ivanich!” exclaimed Maria Dmitrievna.  “However, I always expected as much from your noble feelings.  But as to my being excited, there’s no wonder in that.  I am a woman and a mother.  And your wife—­of course I cannot set myself up as a judge between you and her, I told her so herself; but she is such a charming person that no one can help being pleased with her.”

Lavretsky smiled and twirled his hat in his hands.

“And there is something else that I wanted to say to you, Fedor Ivanich,” continued Maria Dmitrievna, drawing a little nearer to him.  “If you had only seen how modestly, how respectfully she behaved!  Really it was perfectly touching.  And if you had only heard how she spoke of you!  ‘I,’ she said, ‘am altogether guilty before him.’  ‘I,’ she said, ‘was not able to appreciate him.’  ‘He,’ she said, ’is an angel, not a mere man,’ I can assure you that’s what she said—­’an angel.’  She is so penitent—­I do solemnly declare I have never seen any one so penitent.”

“But tell me, Maria Dmitrievna,” said Lavretsky, “if I may be allowed to be so inquisitive.  I hear that Varvara Pavlovna has been singing here.  Was it in one of her penitent moments that she sang, or how—?”

“How can you talk like that and not feel ashamed of yourself?  She played and sang simply to give me pleasure, and because I particularly entreated her, almost ordered her to do so.  I saw that she was unhappy, so unhappy, and I thought how I could divert her a little; and besides that, I had heard that she had so much talent.  Do show her some pity, Fedor Ivanich—­she is utterly crushed—­only ask Gedeonovsky—­broken down entirely, tout-a-fait.  How can you say such things of her?”

Lavretsky merely shrugged his shoulders.

“And besides, what a little angel your Adochka is!  What a charming little creature!  How pretty she is! and how good! and how well she speaks French!  And she knows Russian too.  She called me aunt in Russian.  And then as to shyness, you know, almost all children of her age are shy; but she is not at all so.  It’s wonderful how like you she is, Fedor Ivanich—­eyes, eyebrows, in fact you all over—­absolutely you.  I don’t usually like such young children, I must confess, but I am quite in love with your little daughter.”

“Maria Dmitrievna,” abruptly said Lavretsky, “allow me to inquire why you are saying all this to me?”

“Why?”—­Maria Dmitrievna again had recourse to her Eau-de-Cologne and drank some water—­“why I say this to you, Fedor Ivanich, is because—­you see I am one of your relations, I take a deep interest in you.  I know your heart is excellent.  Mark my words, mon cousin—­at all events I am a woman of experience, and I do not speak at random.  Forgive, do forgive your wife!”. (Maria Dmitrievna’s eyes suddenly filled with tears.) “Only think—­youth, inexperience, and perhaps also a bad example—­hers was not the sort of mother to put her in the right way.  Forgive her, Fedor Ivanich!  She has been punished enough.”